[Sigia-l] Tag Clouds in Print

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

> Is this common? Has the Tag Cloud arrive as a mainstream form 
> of information display?

Representing data by showing things bigger because they have more stuff
associated with them is a pretty old technique isn't it? At least I
recall Tufetian examples from at least the 1800's. Perhaps I'm not
understanding you completely though since (horror) you're making a
reference to offline media that I can't see :-)

I would have thought your observation could just as well be made the
other way around though: the fact that this technique crossed over from
wood pulp to the web in the form of "tag clouds" is an indication of how
well this works as a way of conveying some kinds of information.

Either way though, I agree. Tag clouds rock - just as long as they are
used to enlighten. A pity that far too many "tag clouds" I see on the
web are useless misunderstandings of the technique, like here:

http://tech.yahoo.com/

And here:

http://www.collectivex.com/

Jonathan

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