Head In The Clouds...

Two new word cloud generators just came to my attention via Larry Ferlazzo's Web Sites of the Day.  Wordlings is the newer of the two.  There appears to be no sign up requirements.  You can log in using your Facebook or Twitter account.  Clouds can be created from a website or by copying and pasting text which I accomplished by erasing a web site word list and pasting in my own words. I was able to also type in additional words to my original text.  Once the words are arranged the user can rearrange them, pause the arrangement, take a screenshot or an HD screenshot, save it privately to social sites or a blog, publish it in the gallery or delete it.  There are seventeen fonts to choose from as well as making it small, medium or large in size.  The words can be aligned, horizontal or jumbled.  The text can be black, white or colored.  An image can be uploaded from your computer or thirteen other shapes can be selected.  It is clearly not as sophisticated as the cloud generator that follows.  I could not get the Take  Screenshot option to work and had to right mouse click to get this image.  When the Embed in Your Blog code was used the image appears as about half the size as the web page which looks gigantic on a blog post.  Clearly I need to spend some more time working with this app but then again it is brand new.  It only works with certain browsers.  I needed to use Mozilla Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.



Just a little over a year ago, Hardy Leung created a word cloud generator that rivals Wordle.  Tagxedo takes making word clouds to an art form.  At the first screen users can begin simply by selecting to enter in a web site URL, Twitter ID, Del.icio.us ID, a News event, Search term or lookup a RSS feed.  Five shapes are offered; classic, apple, dove, heart or star.  Orientation can be free style, horizontal, vertical or horizontal and vertical.  There is a choice of seventeen fonts and twenty color themes.  After submitting your choices the cloud will be made.  From the next screen alterations can be made with just a click changing color, theme, font, orientation, and layout.  There are more than 100 new shapes from which to choose. 
A history of all changes the user makes is available in case an earlier design is preferable.  There are layout options worthy of a graphic designer. Images can be saved in a variety of sizes and forms. It can also be printed.

 If the user so desires at this screen words can be loaded from a file, web page or by typing in text.



Final creation saved as a tagxedo.jpg made by entering in National Poetry Month in the News option at the first screen