Wordle

Chances are that you have seen a pictorial image featuring written words online before, but you may not have realized what it was at the time. These images, or "word clouds" as they are better known, are created through mashup applications such as Wordle, a free online application that forms world clouds based on the frequency of words in the specified text.

Wordle allows individuals to create word clouds through various methods. An individual may simply paste text into a text box to create a word cloud. An individual may also choose to enter the URL of a blog or any web page that utilizes RSS feeds, or a Delicious user name to see a visual representation of the tags used. Users can then choose to manipulate the style, size and color of the font to create a more personalized image.

Here is an example of a word cloud that I created by simply pasting text into the provided text box. This Wordle is based on a paper comparing the popular search engines Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

Clearly, you can see that the most common words I utilized throughout the paper were "search," "Google," "Yahoo!" "users," "results" and "Bing."



Here is an example of a Wordle based on my blog.

Since my blog is based primarily on music, it makes sense that some of my most common words are "music" and "songs." However, as the Wordle makes exceptionally clear, I may want to find some more synonyms for "think." 

 

Uploading Images to a Blog

There are two wonderful options for displaying an image on a blog. The first option is to upload the image directly to Blogger by clicking on the "insert image" link, browsing your computer for the file you wish to upload, and saving it to Blogger. The main advantage of this approach is that it is the fastest way to upload a image to one's blog. The main disadvantage is that it may "eat" up a lot of bandwidth or space on one's blog, depending upon the amount and size of the pictures used.

The second option is to upload an image to Flickr, edit it using Flickr tools, obtain the HTML code for the image from the Flickr site, and then embed it into the HTML text box of one's blog. The main advantage of this approach is that Flickr provides users with photo editing and resizing tools and allows users to organize their images by creating tags and descriptions. The main disadvantage is that this process is generally slower than simply uploading an image directly to Blogger. In addition, the correct visual display of the image depends on Flickr's site status.

Below is an example of a photo of singer/song writer Kris Allen embedded from my Flickr: