How can I develop a 'word cloud' within Evernote Folders?

[glennb 0]

I am interested to use Evernote as a tool to summarize key issues within an area of interest via a word cloud.   There are many online resources which, given a collection of text can produce a histogram explicitly or graphically of most common words.    

 

Would anybody have a thought about how to do this within Evernote - at the Notebook level?   It can be a good way to summarize a large collection of data.  

 

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

This is certainly possible, it would have to be done using the Evernote API, and of course you'd be giving a third-party access to your notes in order for this to occur. 

 

There are many online services that allow you to do it by copy-and-pasting text. Wordle and wordsift  would be two such services. 

 

If you wanted to automate the process, the workaround I can see is a bit elaborate and involves using Zapier:

1) IN EVERNOTE Create a new, empty notebook with a name like "wordle" or whatever you like 

2) IN ZAPIER Select "New note in Evernote" as a trigger

3) Select RSS "Create new feed item" as an action

4) Select your Evernote account and test it

5) Select the empty Evernote notebook you created in Step 1 (This is step 4 in Zapier)

6) For Custome Feed URL, choose whatever you like.

     For "title", select the "Title" attribute.

     For "Source URL" select anything, perhaps the "Content URL" attribute, which may be empty if you created these notes yourself.

     For "Content", select the "Content Text" attribute (This is Zapier step 5)

7) Test the zap and turn it on (just follow the buttons!) 

8) IN EVERNOTE: Copy any notes you want to have converted to a word cloud into the notebook you created in Step 1. this will make Zapier think that you have added a bunch of new notes, triggering the creation of a pile of RSS feed items. 

9) IN ZAPIER: Copy your RSS feed link that you created in step 6.

10) NAVIGATE TO http://www.wordle.net/create  and paste this URL into the second text field on the page (The one that asks for a URL) and click "Submit". 

 

I haven't tested this to confirm that it works and you might have to fiddle a bit with the settings in Step 6. Also note that Zapier limits the number of entries in the RSS feed to 50 items, so you'll be limited to analyzing a maximum of 50 notes. Also, there is some tricky timing involved since Zapier only runs periodically. This will take some fiddling. 

[glennb 0]

Interesting...I don't know anything about Zapier, but will look into it - is Zapier similar to IFTTT?  

 

I think an API based solution might be easier.    Any programmers out there looking for a (possibly paid) challenge? 

[jefito 5,589]

Zapier is similar to IFTTT; I had better luck with Zapier when I was pursuing more automation of my Evernote, but I rarely use either service any more.

[ScottLougheed 1,316]

Zapier is like if IFTTT had a job....

Both are great services but zapier definitely makes much better use of Evernote's api than IFTTT does. The RSS thing cannot be done on IFTTT for example.

Definitely a purpose built word cloud maker leveraging the EN API would be ideal.

[ripwit 18]

I'm thinking this could be done by exporting all the notes (or the ones wanted for inclusion) as HTML and then running word cloud software locally.

I deal with some confidential or privileged information and would not want contents available to yet another third party (already available obviously to Evernote.)

Another feature I would like is to use some intelligent word/phrase analyses such as stemming and similar (WordNet?) matching. In my field people type Healthcare and Health Care. They usually mean the same thing.