Tag Art

June 22, 2008 8:54 PM

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use however you like. You can print them out, or save them to the Wordle gallery to share with your friends. Example. (via)
posted by blue_beetle (27 comments total)

Java? That takes me back.
posted by Artw at 8:58 PM on June 22, 2008 [2 favorites]

The question "what would something have to do for me to install Java?" remains unanswered.
posted by jeffamaphone at 9:00 PM on June 22, 2008

Nice =)

I plugged in my MSc thesis. Boy were there a lot of words and phrases that I shouldn't have (had to have) repeated so many times.
posted by porpoise at 9:01 PM on June 22, 2008

I've actually really liked this so far—I found it a few days ago via dw's Projects post. The layout generation does some pretty nice things and they built in a pretty solid stop-word list to keep the contents interesting. The collection of fonts and the provided palettes really go a long way to selling it as something beyond just yet-another-word-cloud.

Front page, obligatory.
posted by cortex at 9:08 PM on June 22, 2008

I feel like it captures the essence of Timecube about perfectly.
posted by Navelgazer at 9:14 PM on June 22, 2008 [1 favorite]

Didnt work. Then I saw I had to turn on Java. Submitted my words. Waited, waited, waited. Firefox locked up. Ctrl+Alt+Del, kill Firefox. Sigh.
posted by crapmatic at 9:16 PM on June 22, 2008

Cool, I guess.
posted by Citizen Premier at 9:20 PM on June 22, 2008

Also obligatory
posted by Citizen Premier at 9:25 PM on June 22, 2008

Not bad. Plugged in an old story I wrote, was gently surprised by what words were the biggest. 5 seconds of entertainment.
posted by paladin at 9:41 PM on June 22, 2008

Obama's Race Speech, March 18, 2008
posted by Dave Faris at 9:52 PM on June 22, 2008

Treaty of Westphalia
State of the Union
posted by blue_beetle at 9:53 PM on June 22, 2008

Well, now this is posted, I can import the ten I did from Projects:

Eisenhower's "Military-Industrial Complex" Speech
Hillary Clinton's "Women's Rights are Human Rights" Speech
Wilson's "14 Points"
Gettysburg Address
Ronald Reagan: "Evil Empire" Speech
Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms" speech
The "Checkers" speech
Jesse Jackson before the 1988 DNC
Obama's NH concession speech, aka "Yes We Can"
McCain's Kenner, LA speech
posted by dw at 10:47 PM on June 22, 2008

My thesis has never looked better.
posted by Bromius at 10:55 PM on June 22, 2008

This is too easily good looking for its own good. I love it, and I want no one else in the world to know about it, so I can go around impressing everyone with my schmancy word assemblages.
posted by redsparkler at 11:06 PM on June 22, 2008

George Carlin is Dead.
posted by iamkimiam at 11:51 PM on June 22, 2008 [3 favorites]

I have Java turned on and it still doesn't work for me in any browser (Mac Panther).
posted by loiseau at 11:54 PM on June 22, 2008

I'd like to see this combined into the CapitolWords item from a few days back that shows the most recurring word used in congress that day.
posted by mystyk at 2:32 AM on June 23, 2008

A Sanskrit word-cloud. The Hrdaya Sutra, really.
Nehru in word clouds.
posted by the cydonian at 3:25 AM on June 23, 2008

Hmmm...no workie for me, Safari or FF on Mac. Java up-to-date.
posted by Thorzdad at 6:42 AM on June 23, 2008

Zig a Zig AH.
posted by ikahime at 7:16 AM on June 23, 2008

oh, cool. I can put a paper of mine in there and see which words I overuse. Like, my own name (from citing my own papers)!

Very useful for word nurds.
posted by cogneuro at 8:09 AM on June 23, 2008

Very cool, but they should allow you to plug in your own stop words.
posted by regicide is good for you at 9:35 AM on June 23, 2008

I plugged in the text of a novella I wrote last fall (unpublished) and the text of one of cory doctorow's novels. The results aren't surprising, but sort of interesting. I have to give mad props to the author of this, as there are a *ton* of options that I didn't even bother with exploring. Anyway. Link.
posted by tychoish at 6:02 PM on June 23, 2008

This is awesome.

Mine:

American Pie
Straight Outta Compton
Longboat (MeTa 9622)
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Romeo and Juliet
Like a Rolling Stone
Titanic
Tao te Ching
Howl
Green Eggs and Ham* (testament to the power of repetition)
Ozymandias* (testament to the efficiency of poetry)

*includes all words in the text - but for the stop words it automatically strips.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 6:52 PM on June 23, 2008

You can tell it not to strip stopwords, if you like.
posted by cortex at 6:55 PM on June 23, 2008

Makes sense, thanks. But I kind of like it this way.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane at 8:13 AM on June 24, 2008

Meta
posted by Dave Faris at 8:31 AM on June 24, 2008 [2 favorites]