EMAC 6374

Text Tool Review - Lewis Giles

Visuwords - http://www.visuwords.com/


Overview:
Visuwords is an online dictionary that instead of showing a simple text based definition of words instead uses visual associations to

define and clarify words. It utilizes Priceton’s WordNet which the university describes as a “large lexical database.” It can be used as a

dictionary and thesaurus.

Cost and Where To Access:
Visuwords is free and can be accessed at http://www.visuwords.com/

What the tool does well:
Visuwords is great at creating a visual connection between words. For example searching “text” will generate the following:

The searched term is displayed in the middle while other associated words become hubs and nodes.

The association between the words can be understood by the key displayed on the side of the page:

So in the above example “publication” is part of “text” while “text” is a part of a “book.”

What Does The Tool Do Best:
Visuwords creates an easy to navigate visual association of words. The interface is easy to use and you can easily zoom in and out of whatever particular section is of interest to you. Holding the mouse over a word gives the definition which is helpful drawing connections between two words especially when you are not familiar with one.

What The Tool Does Poorly:
You can only search single words. It would be nice if you could search phrases like “new media” and ‘social networking” but for now you can only search single words. The Visuwords site is a little unreliable, often it is slow or not responsive at all. If Visuword does not recognize a word you entered it will not tell you so, the screen simply refreshes.