As I write this post I realize it’s been a couple months since I’ve contributed my thoughts to society. At first I felt my comeback needed to be an all-out Photoshop tutorial or design product review… instead I rather write about McCain’s twitter updates.

Tag clouds are becoming more common to everyone’s vocabulary in the design world, especially those who are part of the blogosphere. As something becomes more common, though, we tend to start seeing uncommon takes on it’s usability and visual style.

Some prefer to cluster the tags semantically so that similar tags will appear near each other, while others just want it organized alphabetically. A tag cloud text adjusts in size based on it’s popularity and/or content. So the largest sized font on blog’s cloud will typically be the based on having the most blogs tagged as that item. Others see it as a more intuitive way to navigate a portfolio website where instantly a reader can look at a tag cloud and see exactly where the majority of your client work is.  In a sense it becomes a very aesthetically pleasing navigation system.

Blenderbox, a full service interactive agency, has almost their entire site navigated via a tag cloud at the bottom. When entering their website I can immediately see they’ve done a lot of marketing work, award work, and work for New York. This immediately tells me what type of company they are (marketing/design services more than likely), where their strengths are, and where they are located geographically. All this without having to read any text or click any links. It’s a powerful way to combine navigation and information via a very dynamic cloud system. Blenderbox was recently nominated for a Webby award for “best navigation/structure”

Another clever use of the tag cloud is for displaying stock market data. You can immediately see closing percentage increase or decrease of the New York Stock Exchange. You’re suddenly seeing tons of information in a matter of seconds without having to go look at a long list of letters and numbers to figure out which stocks are doing better than others.

As a designer, I feel that the tag cloud is only to become more prominent in how we convey information to others, and I recommend exploring the idea yourself (http://tagcrowd.com/ is a fun chance to play around with the concept)

1. Coda Design

2. Coda Styles

3. Coda Validates

4. Coda Shares

5. Coda Controls

The well-known, yet hardly relevant virtual world,  is trying to make a comeback. Even though it’s dwindled down to the same crowd that still gets on myspace everyday… it has recently garnered some attention from corporations looking to give Second Life a second chance. 

As companies continue to experiment with ways to monetize the continued boom of the social network scene (facebook, Twitter), as well as the recent economic hit that’s hitting everyone, corporations are realizing that marketing in the virtual world might be cost effective way to reach out to consumers if done right. It’s more about building a relationship and engaging user’s in a more creative way than simply pasting virtual billboards every five feet. The recent issue of Fast Company magazine explains how Careerbuilder set up targeted kiosks in high-traffic areas of Second Life world. It only makes sense that with layoffs abound there’s plenty of unemployed users running around…. and it’s resulted in 6,500 users applying for jobs.

Developer Involve 3D exclaims how at the beginning… “everyone was there strictly for the hype and sunk their money into 15 minutes of fame. Now they [companies] are  analyzing what they’re doing and seeing how Second Life breathes.”

Globallinkhas setup an adveritising exhibition hall allowing Second Life user’s to view fashion, cosmetics, products, etc from different countries in a cleverly engaging way that feels more like a museum experience than cluttered ads. Globallinkexplains how it’s just trying to make globalization easier and more affordable for companies via a presense in the virtual world. 

Although the change in attitude towards Second Life lies in just a handful of companies… it’s a trend that’ll likely continue as the economy forces companies to re-evaluate how they spend their marketing budget.  I myself have never dabbled in the second world… but I assume Dwight’s second second life avatar is where the party is at.

Another neat feature is the Now Playing screen, which displays relevant stats about the currently playing song (ahem, VH1’s Pop Up Video). This is perfect for anyone who wants the lowdown on a song they just snagged via the MixView feature… or just to have playing on your LCD during a party to give the not-so-social butterflies some entertainment and convo topics. Hats off to Microsoft for using their elongated experience to know that one of the paths to victory in this David vs Goliath battle against the iPod is through user-friendly software.