I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows.

If I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe.

No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity.

Because the greatest love of all is happening to me.

I found the greatest love of all inside of me.

The greatest love of all is easy to achieve.

Learning to love yourself.

It is the greatest love of all.

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I recently added a new feature called "shape inversion", which allows you to fill an existing shape inside out. The following are two Tagxedo artworks made in the shape of the same tree:

 and the second one, filling the white space around the tree.

A very different feel, isn't it? The words are from Sting's classic, "Fields of Gold", one of my most favorite songs. IMO, both are wonderful artworks, but the inverted one conveys the mood of the song much better, as the words are figuratively just like a field of gold...

Instead of being confined, limited, the inversion could be expansive, suggestive, and even dreamy. Of course, I am not saying inversion is always the better option - it is generally harder to make out the shape from the inversion - but it often offers quite a different perspective than the original. This is especially true if the original shape is too skinny for Tagxedo to do a good job.

So, how to invert the shape? Two methods. First, if you create the shape out of an image, you have the option to choose whether to fill the dark or light regions (the "Interior" option). Second, in the shape menu there is a button "Invert". Press that, and every shape in the menu will be inverted.

Hope you like it!

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Good news! You can now post your Tagxedo artwork to Twitter or Facebook directly from Tagxedo. There are the Twitter and Facebook buttons at the lower left corner of the Tagxedo app.

Clicking either one of them brings up a simple dialog, with the picture:

Note: If you don't see any popup window, chance is that your popup blocker disallows the popup, in which case please allow it, at least for this site.

Once permission is granted, the picture and the tweet will be upload to Twitter. Here's what was posted to my @tagxedo Twitter account, picture included:

Similarly, you can post a photo to your Facebook account by clicking the Facebook button. Edit your message, and hit "Post to Facebook". A new window will popup and you'll be asked to grant permission to Tagxedo (to publish a photo on your behalf). Here's what I got:

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Three months ago I added a new font called "Simple Slum G" to Tagxedo's font collection. It's funky, playful, a bit weird. And it has a strange name. But it has now becomes my favorite font, by far.

In my opinion, at least for now, it is the perfect font for Tagxedo.

Check out the following Simple Slum G artworks from Daily Tagxedo. Since its October debut, this font has been featured in at least 80% of the Daily Tagxedoes. I didn't do it out of laziness. Instead, Simple Slum G simply looks and feels better than the alternatives.

See the full gallery on Posterous

What make this font special? In general, what makes a good font for Tagxedo? It's hard to quantify, but I come to the following rule-of-thumb after almost two years of obsession with Tagxedo (as a user, not just as its creator). A great font must (1) have a relatively thick ink density, (2) stand upright rather than slanted, (3) have a relative high height-to-width aspect ratio (so that a typical word does not look like a very long rectangle), but not too high, (4) be playful, interesting, but not too "cute" and definitely not too boring, (5) present a unique personality without being too overwhelming...

Okay, what I described was still pretty abstract and fuzzy. But I do know a good Tagxedo font when I see one, and Simple Glum G is definitely the best font for Tagxedo that I have seen. I encourage you to give it a try *. Have fun!

* Hint: Simple Slum G works best with the H/V Orientation.

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I found a very nice "Snowflake" font http://www.fontspace.com/skeldale-house-treasures/ryp-snowflake-8 and immediately loaded it into Tagxedo to see how it looks. The font has glyphs for exactly 26 characters, A to Z. So I typed in "A B C D ... Z", turned on "Normalize Frequency", turned on "Allow Duplication", turned off "Remove Common Words", selected the snowflake shape, and voila! Nice isn't it?

It's a bit late, but still, Merry Christmas to all!

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We lost a tech giant today. Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie, co-creator of Unix and the C programming language with Ken Thompson, has passed away at the age of 70. Ritchie has made a tremendous amount of contribution to the computer industry, directly and indirectly affecting (improving) the lives of most people in the world, whether you know it or not.

I am very fond of the C programming language. Despite all its flaws, I love the simplicity of C, and the raw power it gives me. And his book "The C Programming Language" (co-authored with Brian Kernighan) truly set a standard for excellence. I remember, right after I finished reading the book in my freshman year, I gained a sense of invincibility - that there would be no language too hard to learn, no program too difficult to write. Of course, naïveté was in play then, but it was nonetheless an eye opener, and I loved what I saw.

Here's my tribute to the great Dennis Ritchie, a word cloud made of words from the book "The C Programming Language." Not just a few paragraphs, but words from the entire book. The top 10 most frequent words are function, declaration, expression, character, pointer, return, int, program, operator, and value. The top word, function, appears a total of 717 times. Those who have read the book would not be surprised by this list, as Kernighan and Ritchie wasted no time on fluff, but instead focused on getting the concepts across.

RIP, Dennis Ritchie.

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Here's my small tribute to the great visionary of our time. RIP, Steve Jobs.

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Where Were You on September 11, 2001?

More than 28,800 readers answered this question posted by the New York Times, and I am sure it was on the mind of millions more, mine included. I kept reading the comments and was completely mesmerized.

The New York Times took the words of these 28,800 readers and counted the number of times a word or a phrase appears in the response. The top 10 words are: TV, day, class, school, plane, home, hit, first, work, and news. I turned all the words and their frequencies into a Tagxedo, in the shape of the continental US. Obviously the Tagxedo does not and cannot capture the entire range of emotion, but at least it helped me remember that fateful day, the raw feelings.

Here's the link to the New York Times survey: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/map911-browse.html

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If you believe Facebook is worth $70B, you believe each of her 700M users is worth $70B / 700M = $100. Since LinkedIn has 100M users, and suppose each is worth $100 too (lower social value, higher professional value), LinkedIn should be worth $100 x 100M = $10B, or about $100 a share. As simple as that!

Disclaimer: I don't own or plan to own any LNKD stock (perhaps I should take a closer :D).

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Today's Daily Tagxedo is about the Microsoft purchase of Skype for a cool $8.5B, made in the shape of Skype's iconic logo:

I use a different shape every day to make Daily Tagxedo unique, but the Skype logo was already feature five months ago, so what to do?

The trick is to use negative space. When you add an image, you have the option to set the interior to either black (default) or white. By changing it to white, you ask Tagxedo to fill the lighter part of the image, instead of the darker part. Here's what the Tagxedo made instead with positive space (same text, font, theme, and orientation):

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Interactive: http://www.tagxedo.com/artful/c3cfe3ed2ab041ca

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President Obama made an important announcement tonight - Osama bin Laden was killed by CIA operatives in Pakistan.

The American psyche in the the "Decade from Hell" was largely defined by the 9/11 terrorist attack and its aftermath, hence this is a wonderful ending to an important chapter of American history, though nobody would dare to use the phrase "Mission Accomplished" again. Just to summarize, here's a Tagxedo I made, made of news articles about the demise of Osama bin Laden.

For all the flaws and disappointments people feel about President Obama, I think he deserves at least a little bit of credit for following through on one of his primary campaign promises regarding national security - that capturing and killing Osama bin Laden is priority number one.

Obama: "If we have Osama bin Laden in our sights and the Pakistani government is unable or unwilling to take them out, then I think that we have to act and we will take them out"

Obama: "We will kill bin Laden. We will crush al Qaeda, that has to be our biggest national security priority"

McCain (when asked by Larry King what he'd do if he learned that bin Laden is in Pakistan): "Larry, I'm not going to go there and here's why, because Pakistan is a sovereign nation"

Geez, I'm glad I voted for "that one", who BTW just won his second term.

Enough political opinion from me. Here's a Tagxedo made of the transcript of Obama's speech (source).

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Today let's try something new and turn Tagxedo into a game. Here's an interesting Tagxedo, using words from the lyrics of a famous song, words sized based on their frequencies. I use wild color and a variety of fonts to confuse you (but throw in a hint)... Can you guess what it is?

To reveal the answer, select all text (press Ctrl-A).

Best yet, let me know if you like this game. Too easy? Too hard? Too many colors? Fun or boring?

Edit: if you think you know the answer, you probably are right. Please don't post the answer to the comment section so others can have some fun. Thanks!

Answer: Leavin' on a Jet Plane

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You want to repeal health care? Go at it. We'll have that debate. You're not going to be able to do that by nickel-and-diming me in the budget. You think we're stupid?

Who said that? An unusually combatant Barack Obama that is (in an open-mic slip during a fundraising event). Whatever your opinion of this quote, it surely is quotable. So let's make a Tagxedo:

Interactive: http://www.tagxedo.com/artful/fe31e53268a6406f

The words are sized in order of their appearance in the text (hence, "You", "want", "to" are the biggest), and the same word may appear multiple times ("You" appeared three times).

How would you go about making such word cloud? Just enter the quote, and use the following options:

• Combine Identical Words: No - I want the word "You" to appear three times
• Normalize Frequency: Yes - I want to words to be decreasingly sized rather than uniformly sized
• Remove Common Words: No - I want to see "to", "it", etc.
• Punctuations: Yes - I want "care?" instead of "care"
• Shape: Classic - there are not enough words to fill a shape

This technique can apply to most any quote, and you can literally read the quote off the word cloud, starting from the largest words. Hey, I think this could make a great "Guess the Quote" game!

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Obama gave his speech "the Country We Believe in" today, outlining his deficit-reduction plan (transcript here). What better way to get a quick overview than with a (nicely done) Tagxedo?

Interactive: http://www.tagxedo.com/artful/963f597c69ab4c3f

I highlighted words that appear 20 or more times in red, against a grayish theme. The words are:

deficit, America, tax, cut, spending, country, make, believe

How? All I did was to add the following to the end of the text:

deficit:0:#ff0000

America:0:#ff0000

tax:0:#ff0000

cut:0:#ff0000

spending:0:#ff0000

make:0:#ff0000

country:0:#ff0000

believe:0:#ff0000

The technique is called "word modification" (see this post for more detail), which allows user to easily customize the size (frequency), color, orientation, and font of any word. Each of the popular words was colored red (#ff0000) with an additional frequency of zero (so that the word count is unchanged with this modification... okay maybe this is an overkill).

BTW if you run the text through Wordle, you'll get different word sizes. Why? Well, there are many reasons, one of which is that Tagxedo performs stemming ("tax" = "taxes") and case normalization ("spending" = "Spending").

Hope you like it!

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The first shot of the American Civil War was fired 150 years ago, on April 12, 1861. The Civil War is a fascinating story, the single biggest defining event of the United States of America. There are plenty of teachable elements in the historic conflict, and I thought a good starting point would be a Tagxedo made of words (from Wikipedia) about the war, shaped in the continental United States, and colored according to the territories controlled by the Union (blue) and the Confederate (red):

Interactive: http://www.tagxedo.com/artful/424742e8e48645cf

Aside from the text and the image (very good quality one), the only non-trivial techniques I used were to (1) use source color, (2) honor hard boundary, and (3) increase the emphasis. Simple, isn't it?

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Dear Tagxedo lovers, I need your support!

I just launched the "Continents in Tagxedo" project, in which I am building a collection of Tagxedo artworks of the seven continents, and turning them into posters. In KickStarter, you can "pledge" your support, and if the total amount reaches or exceeds a certain target ($6000) before deadline (in two weeks), the project will be funded and started, and you'd be handsomely rewarded with some gorgeous limited-edition posters!

Sadly, if the target is not reached, the project won't start and you won't be charged for your pledge...

The 'Continents in Tagxedo' collection is a showcase of what Tagxedo can do, and embodies a variety of advanced techniques such as custom shapes, use of all fonts, hard boundary, and font modifiers. Just check out the project video below and you'll see why I'm so proud of the artworks, as well as the tool:

[in case the embedded video does not work, just visit the project page]

Ever since Tagxedo was first launched almost a year ago, many (including teachers and students who are my biggest fans) have enjoyed the creativity offered by Tagxedo. And it is offered for free, and without advertisement (more kid-friendly, and less distraction in the creativity process). Please help support Tagxedo with your pledge, whether you appreciate Tagxedo and want to give some support, or you simply love to get these uniquely gorgeous posters (where you cannot find anywhere else). 

And why not? These posters are great for decoration, and make a wonderful gift - Tagxedo artworks are so distinctly different that they will surely delight, even surprise, those who receive the gifts. Here's what a framed Tagxedo continent may look like:

The following are the latest versions of the artworks in the collection (I may still tweak the choice of words). Hope you like the collection, and pledge your support. Thank you very much!

See the full gallery on Posterous

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One of my biggest fascinations is to create Tagxedo portraits. Portrait is certainly a difficult form of Tagxedo, as it has to capture, under severe constraints of shapes and words, the essence and uniqueness of a person. That it is at all possible is already quite an achievement. Nonetheless, I continued to explore, like an archaeologist upon discovering an ancient artform or language, and through lots of experimentation and practice, I've just slowly mastered the craft of Tagxedo portrait.

All great Tagxedo portraits start with great pictures. Some, such as Steve Jobs, Abraham Lincoln, Anne Hathaway, are easy because of the distinctive persona and great contrast and compositions of the source pictures.

One unusually "portraitable" person was the great actress Elizabeth Taylor, who passed away peacefully today at the age of 79. Taylor has reached the pinnacle of Hollywood long before I was born, but still I was captivated by Taylor's portrayal of Cleopatra even at a very young age. It only makes sense that I give a tribute in the form of Tagxedo portraits. Not just a single portrait, but a series of them, as she is truly that special.

Interactive: http://www.tagxedo.com/artful/868c807c93d047d7

I hope you all like these portraits. Goodbye, the legend that is Elizabeth Taylor.

Note: images from various sources under fair use (transformative).

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Charlie Sheen has been on a roll lately.  I don't watch "Two and a Half Men" or much else TV (last show I followed: "Lost") but unless you have been hiding in a cave, you've heard something about him.

He recently joined Twitter and became all the rage, raking up over 2.3 million followers (and counting) in a short span of time.  What did he say?  According to Tagxedo, this:

Of course, if you are adventurous, you can play with custom shape and make something like the following (using the same text):

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By happenstance I heard a simple quote from someone dying of cancer.

... Nothing we have is worth hurting anyone else for. It's all fleeting, people. Stop seeing race, color, sex, religion, etc... The'yre all just people, and if you try to love them, you won't lose anything.

The words affected me in no small way, and I decided to spend a few moments to make a tribute.

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