Tag clouds are a mechanism for showing a list of topics/categories along with their relative frequencies of occurrence. This can useful for finding content on blogs, news sites, discussion boards, information systems and more. They can be textual or graphical, although the latter gives much greater flexibility and is the focus of this article. Much… Continue reading

I recently attempted to transform a boring, alphabetical list of tags into a more visually-appealing (and more informational) tag cloud. No doubt you’ve seen tag clouds on blogs and other websites (there’s even one on here!) but for the uninformed: A tag cloud is a form of ‘weighted list’ where reusable tags (keywords, categories, etc)… Continue reading

When I first blogged about force-based algorithms, my focus was firmly on charting and graphing; specifically, producing aesthetically-pleasing diagrams consisting of nodes and connectors. Force-based algorithms have many other applications in computer science, from graphics to simulations to problem-solving and beyond. In this post, i’m going to look at the application of a force-based algorithm… Continue reading