Visual learners can thank Wordle, a site that creates word clouds from text or RSS inputs, for making the printed word a little more palatable. The images made by Wordle are part mutated magnetic poetry, part narcissistic blogger temptation (see Utne Reader Wordles below!).
Here’s a Wordle image made from the article “It’s Not a Gay Thing…” from the July-August issue of Utne Reader.
And here’s Albert Einstein’s book, Relativity: The Special and General Theory:
More practical Wordle users could get news updates, suggests Jeff Jarvis of BuzzMachine.com, with word clouds created from an entire edition of a newspaper to show readers the day’s top stories. The website Capitol Words provides a similar word watch for the U.S. government, highlighting the top term discussed in Congress each day. According to the site, Congressional conversations this month focused on “energy” (July 8), “Bosnian” (July 11), and “intelligence” (July 16).
(Thanks, 3 Quarks Daily.)
