You too can create a word cloud. Just go to Wordle. You can plug in the URL of your blog or any RSS feed URL and in seconds a wordle will pop up. Or go on a rant and write down your thoughts in the box provided by the site and you can make a wordle that way too. You can always copy and paste as well. Try putting in a speech you made or your resume and see what Wordle does with that.
There's lots of customization that you can do with different fonts and colors. Then make a screen grab of your wordle, post it, mail it, print in on mugs.
Click on my wordle above to go to the wordle site where it is archived for posterity.
Here's my Twitter word cloud made first at tweetstats.com and then linked to wordle. Click on this and go to my twitter page.
Update on 5/1/09. I just had the idea (probably not the first guy to think of it) to make Obama's Inauguration speech into a wordle. (This time I copied the HTML from the wordle.net site to see how it displays) Here it is:
very cool! I'm glad you liked the post. :)
Posted by: Ginevra | 04/29/2009 at 10:22 PM
Ginevra: Yeah, keep those tips comin'.
Like: how do you do that "ones i like best" sidebar item?
Posted by: Christopher Ming Ryan | 04/29/2009 at 10:35 PM
pretty simple - it's just a links typelist with links to my own fave posts. :)
Posted by: Ginevra | 04/29/2009 at 10:40 PM
Neat, I'm a fan of the Wordle as well. Cool to see all your content put into it Chris.
Posted by: Adam Singer | 04/30/2009 at 12:20 PM
...and you noticed my twitter feed has a nice plug for you... no doubt!
Posted by: Christopher Ming Ryan | 04/30/2009 at 12:24 PM
I'm having problems inserting the screen shot into my blog post. Does it not allow tiff's?
Posted by: Saundra | 04/30/2009 at 03:54 PM
Saundra:
I just tried inserting a tiff into a new post. You're right - typepad
doesn't seem to like it. Can you make your screen shots a jpeg or png?
Posted by: Christopher Ming Ryan | 04/30/2009 at 03:59 PM
Can't do a jpg, I'll try png and see what happens. I'm using a Mac osx
Posted by: Saundra | 04/30/2009 at 04:20 PM
Jpeg works over here... hmmm I also have a mac. You might want to write up ticket on their email support.
Posted by: Christopher Ming Ryan | 04/30/2009 at 04:23 PM
Have you tried taking a screen shot using grab and then saving it as a jpeg?
I was trying to do that with a wordle but it wouldn't let me change to jpeg.
If your mac can do that I'll find out what's up with mine.
Posted by: Saundra | 04/30/2009 at 04:28 PM
Grab defaults to a PNG. You can convert to a jpeg in preview but you don't need to.
Wordle has nothing to do with it. It's all Grab.
Posted by: Christopher Ming Ryan | 04/30/2009 at 04:30 PM