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Computing in Humanities

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Internet for Religious Studies (tutorial) Visualization Data.

Historical Studies

Religious Studies. NodeXL: Network Overview, Discovery and Exploration for Excel. Word clouds considered harmful. In his 2003 novel Pattern Recognition, William Gibson created a character named Cayce Pollard with an unusual psychosomatic affliction: She was allergic to brands. Even the logos on clothing were enough to make her skin crawl, but her worst reactions were triggered by the Michelin Tire mascot, Bibendum. Although it’s mildly satirical, I can relate to this condition, since I have a similar visceral reaction to word clouds, especially those produced as data visualization for stories.

If you are fortunate enough to have no idea what a word cloud is, here is some background. A word cloud represents word usage in a document by resizing individual words in said document proportionally to how frequently they are used, and then jumbling them into some vaguely artistic arrangement. More recently, a site named Wordle has made it radically simpler to generate such word clouds, ensuring their accelerated use as filler visualization, much to my personal pain. And I found one: the word cloud. Beautiful Word Clouds. Learn how to make a screenshot / take-a-screenshot.org. Frequently Asked Questions. Troubleshooting/reporting bugs I can't copy the word count information anymore. I used to be able to. Unfortunately, recent releases of the Java Runtime Environment have made it impossible for Java applets (Java programs, such as Wordle, that run in your web browser) to access your computer's clipboard.

Printing doesn't work! See this. It was written to address a problem with printing in OS X, but may work for Windows users as well. Why isn't there a way to search for Wordles? Wordle is a Google App Engine application. In the future, if Wordle moves to a different platform, or if GAE provides text search capabilities, Wordle will become searchable. May I use my Wordles for... Yes. The images you create with Wordle are yours to use in any way you choose. Keep in mind that if you save a Wordle to the public Gallery, then you can't control how other people use it. If you want to give credit to wordle.net, feel free! May I make money off of Wordle images? May I see the source code? Unfortunately, no. Tour Overview. CRC Studio.