A wordle (also known as word cloud and tag cloud) is a visual representation of words, where the size of each word is proportional to the number of times it appears. Here is an example of a wordle created from hotel reviews using MonkeyLearn's free wordle generator. WordArt.com is an online word cloud art creator that enables you to create amazing and unique word cloud art with ease. Professional quality results can be achieved in no time at all, even for users with no prior knowledge of graphic design. Wordclouds.com is a free online word cloud generator and tag cloud generator, similar to Wordle. Create your own word clouds and tag clouds. Paste text or upload documents and select shape, colors and font to create your own word cloud. Wordclouds.com can also generate clickable word clouds with links (image map). Save or share the resulting image. WordArt.com is an online word cloud art creator that enables you to create amazing and unique word cloud art with ease. Professional quality results can be achieved in no time at all, even for users with no prior knowledge of graphic design. Wordle.net is a free, java based website that allows users to create custom 'mashups' of words from a variety of locations. Including RSS feeds.
Images are great way to spice up your blog posts, eBooks and other websites. Using attention capturing image on a blog post can greatly increase the chances of your visitors to check out that post. The usual options to get images, like stock photos or shared images from services like Flickr are great, but occasionally you might want something different.
Let me introduce you to Wordle.
Wordle is a tool that you can use to create 'word clouds' from text that you provide, either by typing or copy-pasting text to the tool or inserting an URL address. You can use Wordle to create UNIQUE images for your blog, blog posts, eBooks or even T-Shirts.
Word cloud? Well, similarly to a tag cloud you might have seen around in blogs, Wordle weights how frequently words appear in the source text and wary the size of the words based on that calculation, and generates a 'cloud' out of the words.
You can tweak and customize the settings, select the font to be used, colors, how many words to use, manually remove some words, etc. Or you can use the randomize option to 'browse' through the different options until you see something you like.
I could write a tutorial on how to use Wordle, but it's so simple, that it's best that you head out to http://www.wordle.net/create and give it a try.
Wordle generates word clouds from Delicious tags too! Just enter your (or some other users) Delicious username to Wordle. The above image is my Delicious tag cloud
How To Use the Images Created With Wordle?
Wordle is a Java application and you can not directly save the images it generated, but there are several ways to get the images to your blog or print.
1) Take a Screenshot and Use Image Editor to Save It
Generate a word cloud and tweak the settings as you want.
After you've finished, take a screen shot, open the screen shot in image editor, edit the image if needed and then save it.
If you want to use the image on your blog, upload it and add it to a post. If you use Wordle generated images like this, you must give attribution to Wordle.
Taking a screenshot and saving the image on Windows
Wordle Net Free Play
- Press Print Screen key on your keyboard
- Open your favorite image editing software (even 'Paint' will do)
- Paste (the screenshot)
- Adjust size or otherwise edit the image
- Save
Wordle Net Free Online
Taking a screenshot and saving image on Mac
- To capture the entire desktop, press Command-Shift-3.
- The screen shot will be automatically saved as a PNG file on your desktop.
- Open, Edit and Save the PNG file in Image Editor
Source: Capture a Screen Shot With Mac OS at About.com
2) Make the Word Cloud Public on Wordle and Link Directly
You can save the image to Wordle and display it on any website with Wordle Applet.
Wordle.net Free
If you do this, the image is freely available to everyone based on Wordle license.
After you have saved the cloud to Wordle public gallery, copy the code Wordle provides and paste it to your blog or any web page.
Of course, you can also browse the gallery and use other users' word clouds if you want.
3) Print Your Word Cloud
This is the easiest way to get your word cloud to your wall - just use the 'Print...' function on Wordle application.
Not very useful for getting pictures to your blog, but you can use this to create inspirational images to your wall or even for a T-shirt using those services that take any picture, scan it and print it on a shirt. Of use the tips below to ensure quality of the image.
4) Other Options for Getting Your Word Clouds Out of Wordle
Print as PDF
- After your word cloud is finished,
- Use the 'Print...' function on Wordle.
- On the Mac
- Select 'Save as PDF' from the print dialog.
- On Windows, third-party software must be used.
- If you want to have your word clouds as PDFs on Windows, check out the How to Print to a PDF File on Windows -tutorial from How-To Geek.
Print as SVG
Get a printer driver that generates SVG. Or print as PDF like above and use free vector graphics tool like InkScape.
Source: http://www.wordle.net/faq
All images on this post and the word cloud images on this blog have been generated with Wordle.
Wordle Net Free Download
You can find Wordle at http://www.wordle.net/
There you go, give Wordle a try and tell me what you think about it!
There are a few places on the web that have a wordle maker where you can create your very own word cloud. Here I will attempt to share some cool tips and tricks that I come up with in creating my own wordle word clouds. The problems I run into have nothing to do with the text to use or coming up with text ideas, but rather how to make them unique in appearance. So this page will be dedicated to ideas on how to make wordles and how to make them stand out. We’ll start just by listing some current sites that have their own wordle creator: