TAG CLOUDS & TEXT CLOUDS

Flickr is among the top 40 most popular websites on the Web today. It’s not surprising since it serves a very useful purpose. Instead of attaching photos to an email, a person can simply upload the photos to Flickr and then refer people to it. Most photos are meant to be shared and after it’s been seen, it’s archived. In short, most photos have a very brief life. Look at them once then move on.

Aside from the typical user, bloggers—like me—use Flickr as a photo repository. As of November 2008, it claimed to host more than 3 billion images. That’s according to Wikipedia (a site even more popular than Flickr).

(You can enlarge any image by clicking on it. To return to this page, click on the back-arrow of your browser or press the Backspace key on your keyboard.)

Flickr was the first popular website that used tag clouds.

What’s a Tag or Text Cloud?

It’s a visual depiction of the word content of a website. The most frequent words are depicted. Additionally, each word in the cloud is emphasized according to its frequency. Numerous variations exist but this is the basic idea.

What’s the difference between a tag and text? Tags are text that are placed at strategic locations in the code that comprise webpages. Tags are important because search engines like Google use tags to add webpages to its database. For an example, look at the bottom of this blog entry. Its tags are: analysis, cloud, depiction, father, flickr, google, photo, psychology, seo, tag, technorati, text, visual, wikipedia.

Since I created those tags, they’re referred to as user-generated tags.

Let’s examine a text cloud example that was created from this paragraph. The word “word” appears seven times. In this paragraph’s text cloud (shown below), the word “word” is emphasized by its size and thickness. The word “word” is the largest and thickest word in this paragraph’s text cloud.

This text cloud was created through Wordle.

The first text cloud above is a one-time depiction of some content found in one of my father’s published books. “One-time” means that it’s a snapshot. It’s a static depiction of content. Dynamic clouds also exist, like the one at Flickr’s. Dynamic clouds update at periodic intervals or on demand. Dynamic clouds are typically created by third-party web-based services such as Technorati or Wowzio. These services are currently free.

This blog’s dynamic cloud is hosted by Technorati. It’s on the left sidebar. The other blog that I maintain has a dynamic cloud that’s hosted by Wowzio. I use two different providers because providers are not always operational. I wanted to spread the risk so if this blog’s cloud doesn’t appear, it will in the other blog.

Cloud Psychology

Clouds are an example of innovation being spurred by a new medium (the Web) running on technology (the Internet). A Stanford student explained it this way:

When we look at a text cloud, we see not only an informative, beautiful image that communicates much in a single glance, we see a whole new perspective on text.

TagCrowd is taking tag clouds far beyond their original function:

• as topic summaries for speeches and written works
• as blog tool or website analysis for search engine optimization (SEO)
• for visual analysis of survey data
• as brand clouds that let companies see how they are perceived by the world
• for data mining a text corpus
• for helping writers and students reflect on their work
• as name tags for conferences, cocktail parties or wherever new collaborations start
• as resumes in a single glance
• as visual poetry

The list goes on and continues to grow.

In the future, TagCrowd will develop into a suite of experimental tools and tutorials that empower social and collaborative uses for text clouds and related visualizations.

Our mission is to push the innovation envelope in online and face-to-face communities of all stripes.

Would you like to play with clouds?

These three sites create static clouds. Enjoy!

1. Wordle — this is my favorite
2. MakeCloud
3. TagCrowd

THE 12 QUALITIES OF HAPPINESS

At the turn of the century, in my early 40s, I pondered what I really wanted out of my brief life in this world.

I concluded that it was to find happiness and to stay in that zone of happiness as much as possible. But what is happiness? Being happy can be a relative and transient feeling. It's a difficult question I think.

Ponder, for example, whether joy is happiness.

Research has shown a strong correlation between happiness and maturity. Older people tend to be more satisfied with their lot.

Regardless, the nature of happiness is an ancient question with many philosophical branches. Much as I enjoy that exercise, I wanted a more practical definition. I built the following list based upon the research of multitudes who preceded me. Are there other qualities that I am missing?

1. Love, or a feeling of being wanted or needed
2. Optimism, or the feeling of being positive
3. Courage, or the lack of fear (not to be equated with bravery)
4. A sense of freedom
5. Proactivity, or a sense of control
6. Security, or a feeling of "safe-ness"
7. Health, since health is wealth, especially in our older years
8. Spirituality, as one realizes his mortality
9. Altruism, or a willingness to share
10. Perspective, or wisdom and tolerance
11. Humor, because there are so many things to laugh about
12. Purpose, because without it, we just exist and not live

One other aspect of happiness, for me personally, is to leave a worthwhile legacy. It's not a quality which explains why it did not make the list. A legacy, however, is really the only thing we can leave behind. I had an aunt, for example, who left several legacies. One of them is a scholarship fund that pays for the education of the most deserving student from her hometown.

I would like to also mention the concept of "flow." I read this book entitled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. The two editorial reviews in amazon.com said this about the book:

You have heard about how a musician loses herself in her music, how a painter becomes one with the process of painting. In work, sport, conversation or hobby, you have experienced, yourself, the suspension of time, the freedom of complete absorption in activity. This is "flow," an experience that is at once demanding and rewarding—an experience that the author demonstrates is one of the most enjoyable and valuable experiences a person can have. The exhaustive case studies, controlled experiments and innumerable references to historical figures, philosophers and scientists through the ages prove the author's point that flow is a singularly productive and desirable state. But the implications for its application to society are what make the book revolutionary.

Aristotle observed 2,300 years ago that more than anything, men and women seek happiness. The author, a former Psychology professor at the University of Chicago, had for 25 years made similar observations regarding "flow," a field of behavioral science examining connections between satisfaction and daily activities. A state of flow ensues when one is engaged in self-controlled, goal-related, meaningful actions. Data regarding flow were collected on thousands of individuals, from mountain climbers to chess players. This thoroughly researched study is an intriguing look at the age-old problem of the pursuit of happiness and how, through conscious effort, we may more easily attain it.

The book is ponderous reading that reflects the academic background of its author. "Flow" is the equivalent in the common vernacular of being in the "zone." I suppose it is possible to live a life that lies mostly in the "zone" but that is probably possible only under special circumstances or with a special group of people (like Buddhist monks, for instance).

Is being in the "zone" happiness? No, I don't think so. It's too transient. Being in the zone does transport us into another reality. We don't feel hunger. We don't think of time. We're totally immersed in our activity. There is no doubt that being in the zone is a satisfying experience.

However, I think of happiness as a more lasting condition. And that list of qualities contains most of the attributes of that more lasting state called happiness.