The Old Betchablog

It’s pretty simple really…

When I find websites that interest me, I add them to my delicious bookmarks.  But not only do I add them, I also tag them with keywords that give them some sort of meaning.  This means that that when I need to find them I have some reference points.  Over time, these tags build into enormous library that give a pretty insightful snapshop into the sorts of things that I’m finding interesting.  Beyond that, it even gives a pretty insightful snapshot into my personality, my interests, my passions.  These patterns in the tags can be arranged into “tag clouds” that give a really good visual impression of what are usually much more complex collections of ideas and concepts.

So I thought Wordle was an interesting little online app.  Written in Java, Wordle take any text or any del.icio.us feed and turns it into a tag cloud.  A very beautiful, very artistic tag cloud.  Not only does it very quickly analyse the text you feed it, but them gives you lots of options for typography, colour and layout.  It’s not the first tool for generating tag clouds, but it sure is the prettiest!