If you spent the time to master the art of Tagxedo, you can make tons of amazing artworks with very little effort. Sadly, not everyone knows that...

Anyway, since Mother's Day is coming up, and Zazzle (*) is running some promotion (e.g. free shipping over $50, half off T-shirts, etc), I'll take this opportunity to show you how to make a Tagxedo gift that is as gorgeous as it is uniquely yours.

The following instruction is exact, namely you follow my instruction step-by-step, and you'll get a T-shirt -- or mug, bag, apron, mousepad -- like the following, but with your own wordings (which I'll show you how). The steps require absolutely zero mastery of Tagxedo. First-timer? No problem!

Shall we start now?

Step #1: Download the Following Rose Image to Your Computer

Usually you just righ click the picture and "Save Image as ..."

Step #2: Open Tagxedo (http://www.tagxedo.com/app.html):

Note that Tagxedo requires Silverlight, and if you have it, you should see the application and the startup Tagxedo word cloud (currently, the blue planet, using only two words, "Mother Earth"). Otherwise, please install Silverlight, which works on desktop Windows and Macs.

Step #3: Import the Image of Rose as Shape

Click the arrow next to Shape, which brings up the shape menu. Click "Add Image", while brings up a file dialog; navigate to the image you just downloaded and open it. Move the threshold slider to 0%, and then hit Accept. You have just added a new shape! Tagxedo will now compute the word cloud, and a few seconds later, you should see something like this:

In other words, the shape has been changed to that of the rose, but the color and the words are still the same.

Step #4: Choose to Use Source Color

Click the "Word | Layout Options" button, and then change "Use Source Color" to "Yes", and hit Accept:

"That's easy", you may say. Yes it is!

Step #5: Put in Your Own Words

Now, you want to put in your own words, don't you? Click "Load", and click the area next to "Enter Text", and start typing your words.

What words? Well, that's up to you. Your mom's name? The words "Happy Mother's Day"? Some words that best describe your mom? It's all up to you.

What? You still need some examples? Alright, here's mine:

Happy Mother's Day! Linda wonderful caring lovable loving nice kind witty smart quick patient resourceful love to laugh loyal love to smile dedicated

How many words? As few as just one. As many as, say, 200. If there are not enough words, Tagxedo will duplicate some of them. If you put in more words than that (say, the Bible in its entirety, such as http://www.tagxedo.com/shop#Bible), Tagxedo will pick up to a few hundreds of the top words.

When you are done, hit "Submit". A few seconds later, you'll get this:

That's it! Not too bad, right?

Step #6: Make a Gift at Zazzle

Now let's turn this into a gift. Click the "Gift" button in the lower-left corner of the app. You'll see a preview of the artwork as a T-shirt, mug, mousepad, and bag:

Click the left-hand-side one ("transparent"). I know the preview color may be a bit off but don't worry, as you'll get to see the real thing in a minute.

After you click, a popup window will open. Make sure the popup can be successfully opened. Some browsers may block such popup, but they'll warn you about that. Please make sure your browser allows this particular popup (usually by clicking something near the address bar to "allow" this popup).

If the popup window is successfully opened, you'll need to wait a few seconds for Tagxedo to transfer the data over to Zazzle. When done, you'll be presented with a page like this:

Wow, an entire range of merchandises made with the Tagxedo artwork you just made, with your own words! T-shirts, mugs, and aprons are popular. Here's what the T-shirt page looks like:

So, just complete the order and your gift is on the way!

I hope you guys like it!

-- Hardy Leung (creator of Tagxedo)

(*) Keep in mind that I write this out of goodwill rather than greed. The incremental revenue I get out of Zazzle cannot justify the amount of time I spent on writing this post...

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.

 

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!

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:

Let's say you click the Twitter button. Go ahead and edit the tweet, or leave it alone (by default, it says "Check out this gorgeous artwork I made with Tagxedo!"), and then press the "Post to Twitter" button. A new window will popup and ask for your permission to post to Twitter on your behalf.

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:

Neat, isn't it?

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:

Hope you like it! And in case you do, please help me spread the word by sharing your artwork with your Facebook friends and Twitter followers. I bet a majority of your friends have not seen Tagxedo, and I'm sure many will be amazed and thankful for your sharing!

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.

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.

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!

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.

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

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

 

Interactive: http://www.tagxedo.com/artful/8aa399de43ff4b98

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).