Content Clouds... What are they?

A content cloud provides an alternative means of web content classification to the usual human generated 'tags'.
A content cloud is created automatically, based entirely on the content of a page or site.
The words that appear are those that are calculated as significantly above the 'average' frequency as found in the British National Corpus.
For a more detailed explanation visit the following website: www.webguruguide.com and search for 'content clouds'.

Content Cloud Visualisation

I'm interested not in how we generate this content cloud... but how we can visualise it to make it more significant in human computer interaction. This page explores ways to view and display Content Clouds - from linear to interactive 3D. Enjoy!

Using HTML & CSS:

Content Cloud Randomised Text-Block - with frequency visualisation

Dynamic Content Cloud using CSS

Using Flash and XML data.

HTML and CSS only allow a limited amount of options when it comes to displaying text. Flash is a great web technology that allows for richer graphics and animation.
The only problem - how to get the content cloud keywords into a flash app?
This is where XML comes in. XML data can be imported into flash on loading.... so first we need to create the XML data file.In all the following examples the text and links are all imported from as XML data which is the the following format and saved as contentcloud.xml

Just copy, change the data to your own keywords and links and save as contentcloud.xml
<contentcloud_item rank="8" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/index.php">tobsblog </contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="8" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">certified</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="8" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">microsoft</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="8" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">university</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="7" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk">tobyonline</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="7" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/elearn.php">e-learning</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="7" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/sitemap.php">sitemap</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="6" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">systems</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="5" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk">technology</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="4" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">trainer</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="4" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/teach.php">experience</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="4" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">instructor</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="4" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/teach.php">teaching</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="3" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">lecturer</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="3" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/teach.php">networking</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="2" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">MCSE-MCT</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="2" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">certification</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="1" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">corporate</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="1" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/teach.php">communications</contentcloud_item><contentcloud_item rank="1" link="http://tobyonline.co.uk/quals.php">corporate</contentcloud_item>

Content Clouds... What are they?

Content Cloud Visualisation

Using HTML & CSS:

Content Cloud Randomised Text-Block - with frequency visualisation

Dynamic Content Cloud using CSS

Using Flash and XML data.

Content Cloud: Flash-based scrolling list

Content Cloud: Flash-based target area

Content Cloud: Flash-based 3D fly through cloud

Content Cloud: 3D cloud - colour coded frequency visualisation