I did not have much success with "word clouds" during the semester, but recently came across the Tagxedo site. Either Tagxedo is much easier to use than the other sites I've tried, or I am getting a little more intuitive :). The Tagxedo site has a gallery of word cloud examples. They are primarily the work of the site's creator, Hardy Leung, very creative and inspiring.
I created my first successful word cloud about a week ago on Tagxedo. It was a heart shape, using the content of this website (my blog). It took me a while to muddle through the process as I don't see any step-by-step instructions on the Tagxedo site and I am not all that intuitive!. I was so excited that I ordered a mouse pad with my design on it! I was able to upload my Tagxedo word cloud to Facebook to show it off.
Today, I revisted the Tagxedo site, hoping that I could successfully create another word cloud and learn a bit more about the functionality of this site. There are a variety of word cloud shapes already built into the site from which the user can select, but it seems you can also download your own shapes to create word clouds. I have not gotten that proficient yet! However, by using one of the shapes from the site, copying the Gettysburg Address from Wikipedia and pasting this into the creation page on Tagxedo, I was able to produce a word cloud that I am hoping to share here ... one way or another!
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