The Web is full of useless little online gadgets that I often dismiss outright. At first glance, I thought Wordle might be one of these gadgets when it was first pointed out to me by a work colleague. But no, he was right.

Now I see everyone using Wordle, an online application created by IBM's senior software engineer Jonathan Feinberg. Using text entered by its users, Wordle creates "beautiful word clouds" that show you how frequently words occur within someone's text. The more often a word occurs, the bigger it appears in the cloud.

So you can enter the text from one of your blog posts, and see what happens. Or, as I did, you can simply create a cute little Wordle using words with a theme. What you see here is my Wordle, created when I added words to describe how I feel about being an empty-nester these days:

OK, so I obviously miss my kids.

At Wired.com recently, the editors entered the words used in the keynote speeches delivered at both the Democratic and Republican national conventions, and the results were interesting. Readers noticed, among other things, the presence of the tiny word "men" in Michelle Obama's Wordle and the large word "man" (reflecting the frequency of its use) in Sarah Palin's Wordle. Take a look at both Wordles here:

The only problem I can see with Wordle at the moment is that it's not dynamic. You can save your Wordle by doing a screenshot of it or by printing it. But because IBM owns the rights to Wordle, you can't turn it into JPEG file or use it in a more dynamic way.

Nevertheless, check out the website, especially its gallery of Wordles created by hundreds of users. Way cool.

Wordle: Learning to Communicate

The Wordle Blog

The Wordle Gallery

Fun With Wordle