Feeling overwhelmed by using more than a dozen different software programs before finishing my morning coffee, I looked for a list of software to make a word cloud.
The best I could find is a list of lists of software on Wikipedia. It’s so big my snipping tool got woozy!

I looked at ones that interest me and ended up at a list of Open Source software for Windows. Not all Open Source software, not FreeĀ Open Source software (FOSS), just Open Source software for Windows.

I copied the text and went to Wordle to make a word cloud. That didn’t work because Opera doesn’t support Java. Tried it in Chrome, same result. Firefox too. The Wordle troubleshooting guide said to try Explorer, so in desperation I tried Microsoft Edge. Same result.

I searched for word cloud generators that don’t use Java and found a blog by a teacher that recommended Tagul for older students. I’m sure she didn’t have 62 year olds in mind. A little fiddling and I found you can choose the fonts and shapes and colors! This is fun! I’ve almost forgotten how upset I was at the overwhelming amount of software I need to use every day. Now lets see if I can get the Tagul to work in my blog post.

Update – It works! Scroll over the tiny words to read the software programs’ names.

####