I started a hobby group with an awesome colleague from IT a few weeks ago, we explored a few online tools and generated some cool viz using free tools such as Visual.ly, Wordle, Tagul, and Many Eyes.
Last week I learned about a great tool called Text is Beautiful. It uses algorithm to generate concept cloud, concept web, and correlation wheel. I experimented with text from wikipedia pages, journal articles, and a few websites, the results are fascinating! Below are a few examples.
This is a concept cloud generated using the text from the Wikipedia page about flat white. Each colour represents a concept theme, kind of like Wordle, but with a twist.
This one was generated using the text from a code4lib article, Using XSLT and Google Scripts to Streamline Populating an Institutional Repository. You can see the concepts of the article at a glance. Amazing result!
This is the concept web for the same article. Concepts that are highly related appear closer to each other, they also appear in the same colour.
Finally, here is the correlation wheel for the XSLT article. Related concepts will be highlighted when you hover over each concept. You can find out which concepts are highly correlated with each other from this visualisation.
I had a lot of fun experimenting with these free tools. I always encourage others to try all these things, these days you don’t have to be a tech head to create impressive stuff 🙂 Just keep trying and learning!
//icecjan/ 