Wordle

Wordle is one of those web toys that you can play with for hours. Currently I am fascinated with sayings, expressions and text on samplers so this toy for generating “word clouds” from text had me hooked. I am thinking it would be a very contemporary way to have text on a sampler.

You can paste in a block of text, enter a del.icio.us user name to see their tags or simply paste in a block of text to generate a cloud. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

Once you have created some word clouds you can save to a gallery.

Wordle is a Java applet, and since Java applets can not write anything to your computer you will need to take a screen shot if you want to same a picture. If you are on a Mac if you hold down the apple key, the shift key and 3, all at once. A picture will appear on your desk top. Open the picture and you will see it is a screen shot!

Perhaps one of my readers can leave a comment and let PC owners know how to save a screen shot because I don’t know!

You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes.

As you can see I had a lot of fun. Click on the images to go to larger sized versions of the screenshots.

The first two images are created by using a block of text from an article on samplers I wrote. The image above and below are both generated from the URL of my blog. I found it interesting that a very large word is people. I must use it all the time without realise it but I think it says something about me at another level too.

I have cross stitch software to take this into if I want to but like many of these things if I am given too many options I play all day with the design and don’t get to stitch it!

 

Treats online

Over on the Stitchin Fingers forum Dijanne Cevaal pointed to an article in the ABC site titled Sewing 2.0. It’s a very good article about the rise in the interest in crafts and the possible drivers for this cultural shift - or what is percieved as a cultural shift.

Personally I think the web has much to do with it as people see what others make and that encourages them to have a go too. This statement rang true for me “new technologies like web 2.0, which have helped to spread the enthusiasm by creating linked up communities who can share information”. It felt particularly relevant since I had just set up a community site Stitchin Fingers within the last 24 hours (do check it out) . I think the web is a big reason for the rise in people making their own clothing and domestic furnishings. What do you think?

On another note Jean Campbell has written a tutorial on Making the Perfect Bead Dangle for Beading Daily

I thought I had found absolutely every colour theory site online but no I had missed out the Colors on the Web site which Linn of the Embroideress pointed to. Don’t miss it as although the site is aimed at web designers the site houses lots of useful tools for textile designers.

Two areas that you will find useful are the color wizard, and the colour wheel. The color wheel spins three colors which are selected from 16 million colors so the combinations are endless.

I can see the Color Wizard being very useful to textile designers. You submit a base color, and the wizard produces matching colors. Variations are monocromatic, analogeous, triadic, tetradic, complimentary and split complimentary. When on the site if you look at the diagram of the colour wheel it illustrates what these terms mean.

Colors on the Web also houses articles on colour theory and the Color Contrast Analyzer is aimed at web designers as it helps them choose colour combinations that are readable and accessible.

 

Sketchcast

Sketchcast is a new fun service which allows you to record a drawing with or without you speaking. Then you can embed the movie on your blog or website for people to see. It is great for explaining something with a ‘back of the envelope sketch’ like for instance you could recored steps on how to do something

It is browser based so there is no software to download. It is easy to use so it is not a steep learning curve and best of all it is free.

You have to register an account which took me a few moments. Next log in to the site and click the “Create” link on the top menu.

Click the “start recording draft” button, and draw with your mouse. If you want to stop and delete your work you can at any time by simply clicking “pause the recording” then clicking restart.

Preview what you have done by clicking “pause the recording” then selecting the play icon at the bottom of movie.

If you are happy then click publish. Done! It’s that simple.

 

Interesting Textiles up for auction

Virginia Spiegel dropped me an email to remind me that her Reverse Auction opens on March 10 with 100% of the proceeds to go directly to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause.

There is some fantastic artwork that is included. For instance take a look at this Woad Kimono-Style Jacket. There are art quilts, jackets, and beaded pieces. You can find out all about it here

On another note a couple of quick links this morning as life is busy but I wanted to direct your eye to a number of craft and mixed media tutorials housed at the ART chix Studio

Also Crabby Old Lady has a great list of Blog and Internet Annoyances which I bet most readers will agree with but you would be surprised how many bloggers/web site designers don’t take these points into consideration.

 

FotoFlexer is fun

FotoFlexer is an free and easy online digital photo editor which is ideal to use to do the usual tasks such as  crop, rotate, resize, flip and red eye fix.

For textile practitioners however it is an ideal introduction to digital design. You can upload one of your own images and have access to standard image manipulation tools in order to develop a design for textile projects.

Although some have said FotoFlexer is like Photoshop it is far from the depth of the Adobe package but it is good. That said for an average non professional user who wants to have some creative fun with a digital image it is a great free online graphics editor.

Adding text to an image is simple and you can draw on top of an image. Colour and erase are also available.

You can smooth or sharpen an image or apply effects to images such as turning it sepia or inverting the colours in the image. Or you can turn the image into an ink stamp, fresco or film grain using some of the effects. Pinching, twirling , bulging and stretching the image is also possible. It is even possible to layer images forming composite pieces. After all this playing if you do not like it you have an undo button too.

For those who have not explored designing using a graphics editor this little free web based app is an ideal introduction. If you want keep up with any news about it there is the FotoFlexer blog too!

 

How many of us are there?

I was poking around the Internet Archive yesterday In the text Archive an noticed that last week Beeton’s Book of Needlework was the second most downloaded book of the week with 8,293 downloads.Now these are downloads of this book in one single week. That’s a lot of needleworkers online downloading this book in one week. I would love to know just how many active stitchers are online.
In the industry often the various textile and craft communities are seen as small little backwaters of the net filled with little old ladies who barely know how to click a mouse let alone communicate online. I know this stereotype is wrong and I sense that as a niche it is not as small as even some stitchers think particularly if we take this little statistic as an indicator of interest.
I think there are many stitchers who are active on discussion forums and email groups and yet another cluster who blog but I sense this is just a very small indicator of the number of stitcher who use the net regularly.

Many people simply browse, read and download material but do not necessarily keep a blog or regularly interact with a discussion group. In other words lots of stitchers lurk. As an indicator this blog gets between 1,000- 1,500  hits in a day - which it does regularly - often those hits only generate 4 or 5 comments. So there is a lot of hidden activity which I think this download statistic from the internet archive also points to. Think about it for a moment if you think of all the sub categories of textiles knitting, quilting, sewing, costume , and so on. How many of us are there? Of course there is no real way of knowing or linking up such a large group but boy what a social network site it would make if it did and knowing stitchers they would talk to one another- gosh it would be a busy corner of the web! It would be a busy online life indeed - perhaps too busy to get any stitching done!

That wild thought aside why do you think people lurk? By lurk I mean read but never even leave a comment? I can understand how people might find a discussion group or keeping a blog too time consuming but I am interested in those who read but never even comment. If you read something interesting it is easy enough to chip in to the conversation for moment but many don’t. Why do you think? Is it that they feel there is nothing in it for them? Are people conditioned to consume but not participate? Or do we really in a world where people happily take but don’t give back? These are just a few questions in my mind before I bound into the shower and go to work. I would love to hear people thoughts on this.

 

Ma.gnolia

Ma.gnolia is a social bookmarking site. Those who are familiar with del.icio.us will know what I mean by the term.

Basically these sites are way for people to share bookmarks. Social software services such as these are causing a lot of buzz around the net. In this case the idea is to share your favourite places on the web. It means for anyone who moves from computer to computer – perhaps between work and home that because your book marks are on the web, you have access to your favorite websites from anywhere .

Although bookmarks can be kept private the idea is to share them and you can see what other people have found and see who has the same interests as you which of course means you can share bookmarks with your friends. People can rate bookmarks on Ma.gnolia so it acts as a sort of popular quality control. It also means that you are browsing through links that are thought to be worthwhile by people – not a search engine. I am sure everyone in their browsing have encountered link farms and quickly realised just how useless they are. Social bookmarking is not like that. A person has thought the link worthwhile and entered it into their favourites list. It is along the line of bookmarks by the people for the people.

Ma.gnolia allows for tagging. Anyone who is familiar flickr will have encountered tags. Tags are like categories or labels that you and others can allocate to bookmarks. It means you can search or browse by tag. It’s a great way to while away an afternoon.

You can import your bookmarks from popular browsers or other social software sites such as del.icio.us so you don’t have to re bookmark everything. I imported 500 odd bookmarks from del.ic.ious and it only took a few moments. Also Ma.gnolia keeps a copy of the page so if you have ever had the experience of bookmarking a site and then discovering it is no longer online you at least have a copy.

Also Ma.gnolia caters to groups which the social aspect of bookmarking is highlighted making it slightly different from del.icio.us. People can leave messages in a similar way you can at flickr. At the moment most of the groups seem to be orientated around geeky topics which is normal with new stuff like this, but there is no reason why the textile community can not establish groups and use the service. Anyone who is a member can start one. Best of all the service is free.

Just in case anyone is interested my bookmarks are under – you guessed it - sharonb. Now if I was really good I would annotate the lot - but I am a bit busy to do that but I think a good sort out might be in order. They are a bit geeky but they are open for anyone who wants to take a peek.

 

Retrievr

The idea of sketching to describe something is not new but to use the concept to find imagery online is experimental. A new search engine based on this idea is very much in the experimental stage. Retrievr allows the user to find related Flickr images by drawing a sketch.

It is not a case of if you are looking for a picture of a rose you can find it. The application matches large shapes and colors in other words compositional elements in an image. I found it fascinating as I sketched in basic compositional divisions of a page and watched what came up. It’s one of those things that for me turned into a way to switch to neutral and just enjoy experimenting with imagery. I first just played around with black and white then I mucked about with primitive sketches.

This is what I found during my experiments. The large box on the left is a rough drawing of a general landscape just blocking in areas. The four little images on the right is what was found. It’s a long way from being a search engine as such, but boy what a lovely source of inspiration when you feel a bit dead headed.

The nuts and bolts behind the scene is run by python but it is fascinating to see the path that this is taking in combination with tagging, RSS and social software I get quite excited about this. I am not about to go all geeky on you, but it’s all interesting stuff to me. I am constantly fascinated not by the technology as such, but how people use the technology.

 

Wordclouds of daily stuff

This use of word clouds looks fun. Word clouds fascinate me because I think of my interest in typography. Basically in a word cloud the more a word is used the larger is becomes. So the size of font a word is displayed in delivers information in a visual manner.

Anyway on this site you can generate a word cloud from your blog and have it printed on T-shirts but I think I would like to have it printed on more objects that are used daily such as a mug. I bet Jerry would like a word cloud coffee mug generated from his blog.

Found with thanks via ArtsyMama

Thanks everyone who has left a comment on my previous post. I am quite touched and pleased my regulars are so loyal.

 

Absolutely mortified

If ever there was a day when I questioned keeping a site today has been it as last night my site was hacked. As soon as I found out I immediately got in contact with my hosting service. Thankfully even though it was the middle of the night in the US they were in contact with me within half an hour having traced the problem. I then set about cleaning up the mess.

For those who have current security software it should have caught the file. If not of course do not click on any file that downloaded itself from this site as this will activate and install the Trogan.

I have spent most of the day sick to my stomach mainly because I know that although people are told constantly to keep their virus protection software up to date – they do not necessarily do it. So all I can say is that I am genuinely sorry. It should be OK now but I am going to do a little extra work behind the scenes for the next few days. So I won’t be blogging.