Wordle is one of those web toys that you can play with for hours. Currently I am fascinated with sayings, expressions and text on samplers so this toy for generating “word clouds” from text had me hooked. I am thinking it would be a very contemporary way to have text on a sampler.
You can paste in a block of text, enter a del.icio.us user name to see their tags or simply paste in a block of text to generate a cloud. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.
Once you have created some word clouds you can save to a gallery.
Wordle is a Java applet, and since Java applets can not write anything to your computer you will need to take a screen shot if you want to same a picture. If you are on a Mac if you hold down the apple key, the shift key and 3, all at once. A picture will appear on your desk top. Open the picture and you will see it is a screen shot!
Perhaps one of my readers can leave a comment and let PC owners know how to save a screen shot because I don’t know!
You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.
As you can see I had a lot of fun. Click on the images to go to larger sized versions of the screenshots.
The first two images are created by using a block of text from an article on samplers I wrote. The image above and below are both generated from the URL of my blog. I found it interesting that a very large word is people. I must use it all the time without realise it but I think it says something about me at another level too.
I have cross stitch software to take this into if I want to but like many of these things if I am given too many options I play all day with the design and don’t get to stitch it!
Thank you Sharon for this address, I had great fun playing with it !
http://quilt-creations.blogspot.com/2008/08/just-playing-for-fun.html
Cecile, in France
Chrissie
I am on a Mac so I use Mac Stitch
hi what software do you use for your cross stitching
regards
Chrissie Day
http://chrissieday@wordpress.com
Thank you so much for mentioning my blog on yours!
I have been reading all the blogs you mentioned in the “g”s and I am honored to be among them.
Sharon, you have made my day by mentioning me in your blog!! Life is rough around here and your mention was a bright light in my day!!
I washed and hung 17 of my stitcheries on the line last week. Now, it’s what do I do now???? Any and all suggestions are welcome!!
Blessings, Miss Paula from Gathering of Friends!!!
Fantastic1 now, if i could write in japanese….
neki desu
Thanks, Sharon! Our family reunion is this weekend so I made a word cloud of all of the names on my address list. Way cool! (posted on Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/marjorie-il/
OMG!!! This is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for sharing it. I am have a blast already. Put in the first 4 verses of The Raven.
Thank you for the tip on keeping a record of work on wordle on my PC will give it a try
Annette
To get just the window use Alt+Print Screen. You only get the active window that way instead of the entire desktop.
I love the clouds….it would make a great sampler!
If you’re using a pc but don’t have any photo editing software, you can also press “prnt scrn” and then paste it into a word (or any other word processing) document, which is what I usually do 🙂 This looks like fun so I;m off there now to have a play!
Sharon, That is fun.
To do a screenshot on a pc, just press the PRT SCN key on your keyboard, right side above the Insert key on a regular keyboard, and usually in the same vicinity on a laptop..
Then open your Paint program (programs>accessories>paint) or any other photo editing program that you have installed, but Paint comes standard with Windows.
Using the Edit menu, just click on Paste, and then File, Save As: and name it.. Voila’ you have a saved screenshot. Hope that’s clearer than mud.
Oh. My. God. What fun. Now I MUST make just the perfect collection to stitch. Using an article is a good idea. It definitely looks better with more words rather than less.
Too much fun Sharon. I used a PC & saved it as a PDF file. I use cutePDF (a free download). Make your wordle, click on print & select cutePDF as your “printer” this will save your wordle in your documents (or whereever you want to choose). I noticed it is also explained (probably clearer) in the wordle FAQs
Rachael as I said in the article (you may have missed it) you can save the images by taking a screenshot. That is how I have pictures in my post.
I love wordle – so much fun – but it makes me sad you can’t save the words as a picture ….