17 August 2010

Focus of Attention

The interesting software at WordItOut allows you to take a text or a webpage and create a word cloud showing the frequency of use of certain words in that text.  (Though it is not clear to me how much text from a website is used.) 
This sort of analysis can be useful.  For instance, the Sydney Morning Herald made a word cloud from Julia Gillard's recent speech (seen above), discovering her focus to be on "friends" who "want" "work" -- climate did not appear in the cloud.

The word cloud below shows the focus of attention for this blog, just as an example, selecting words of 6 letters or more.  Just for fun I made word clouds for a few other climate-related blogs (but not posted here) -- some interesting results!

Focus of Attention of http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com

Word cloud made with WordItOut