Miles’ Blog » Web Technology

My mate, Myles Eftos, recently blogged about this great little app, Wordle, which creates a ‘tag cloud’ based on text that you can upload.

He suggested a meme using your blog content to create a tag cloud, however rather than my own content, I used the text of Kevin Rudd’s brave Apology to the Australian Indigenous Peoples speech, delivered on 13 February 2008, to create the above.

See the larger version over at Flickr.

What tag cloud can you create using famous or important texts?

Image: Apology Tag Cloud.

This really should be filed under a new category ‘Oh golly, I can’t believe I didn’t blog about that!‘ but anyhow…

It was announced at BarCamp2.0, a month ago, that the WA Chapter of the Australian Web Industry Association is putting on a conference on our side of the country. Edge of the Web (EOTW for those in the know) will feature technical and business streams, and more details will soon be announced on the Edge of the Web website.

The speaker line-up is looking impressive so far, and the venue is fantastic! Circle November 6 and 7 in your calendar now and I’ll leave the rest to the official announcements, coming soon… :)

Image: Edge of the web announcement.

Browsing through the public timeline, and my own Twitter feeds, I can’t help but feel the above completely fabricated results graph is surprisingly accurate. Don’t be offended, it’s all in good humour.

Image: Fictional research graph on tweet topics.

You may all be interested to learn that Buddha has joined Twitter. OK, maybe not the real Buddha, but twice a day you can receive some of his teachings and inspirational quotes on your Twitter feed.

As a testbed for some ideas I have for using Twitter in business applications, we’ve created a ‘twitter bot’ which posts sayings of the Buddha or Buddhist verse and quotes twice a day onto twitter. If you have a twitter account already, you can follow thebuddha, and if you are in the USA, you can send a text which states ‘follow thebuddha’ to 40404, or to stop following (why would you?) send a txt to the same number with ‘off thebuddha’.

Let me know what you think (suggestions for quotes under 140 characters, and bug reports welcome!) below.

Enjoy!

Image: Screen grab of first tweet from thebuddha.

I know I’ve been remiss in posting much here recently, with the occassional tumbleweed rolling past this blog, and I will catch up on something to say soon, however I do want to make a quick mention of an important event in the Western Australian web industry calendar.

Next week, we’re very lucky to have both Lisa Herrod (Scenario Seven) and Rachel Cook (Vibe Capital) making time to visit us and present on usability, accessibility, web start-ups and more.

I’m biased, of course, because the event is organised by the Australian Web Industry Association, which I am Chairperson of, but I am even doubly biased, because one of the events esteemed sponsors is Bam Creative.

Have a gander at the Ideas4 website, and then buy your tickets online. Quick! The event is on next week, and once it’s been, you only have yourself to blame for missing it!

I hope to see you there!

Image: Ideas4 website screengrab.