Tuesday, October 06, 2009

The Word Cloud


I found something interesting when I read author Jonathan Stratford's blog the other day. He had found an application called Wordle, which lets you feed it your website or any text, and then produces a "cloud" of words for you to see.

Here I have put in my own bloggings for half of a year into Wordle. Patterns emerge, certain words I use often are bigger then those I use less frequently. It is a fascinating thing, because all sorts of sentences pop into my mind when seeing the word-cloud. And like Stratford points out, I think that there is more to be gained trough this then just simple fun.

Instead of reading from left to right, word clouds can be read read upside down, from right to left and perhaps let you see connections between different concepts in your own writing and other writings. As with the Bible, which this blogger has done. Also one of my favorite philosophical texts, the Tao te Ching can be seen as a word cloud.

Try it for yourself. What do you see in your cloud?

4 comments:

Susanne Iles said...

It's amazing how positive and uplifting your word cloud is!

I'm so curious to find out what mine might say about me.Thanks for sharing!

Felicia Monique said...

I fell in love with the "photo" as soon as I came to your blog. I'm delighted to read that it is a word cloud that I can reproduce on my own with my own words.

What stands out in your cloud is: "different", "people", "life," and "music." Thank you for sharing!

Suecae Sounds said...

Thank you both for your comments. I find this very inspiring.

I was in fact kind of surprised to see just how positive mine turned out to be.

Sarah Sullivan said...

Oh how cool is that - I'm gonna try it!! I love yours...
Loved your comment about my new gothy look..I thought that might surprise you..giggle...Loved your pics on Myspace. Despite the fact that my artwork is all whimsy and seldome dark..I have really enjoyed morphing the photos..so much fun to Let Fly with my darker side. Will be posting a few gothy shots of me this week...stay tuned.bwahahahahah..

Have a great weekend hon, Sarah