5 things to do on your furlough

2. Create a word cloud

Go to wordle.net and create a new project. Paste the text of your résumé and play with colors and fonts until it looks the way you want. Other than creating a fancy cloud, it will also show you the focus of your résumé. Wordle’s aren’t embeddable — if you want to add it to your blog or website, make the window as large as you can, and take a screen-grab of it.

3. Create a word tree

Go to Many Eyes and log in (or create an account). Upload a dataset — the text of your résumé — and save it. (This is public information, so if you don’t want your phone number and address out there, don’t include it.) Visualize the data as a word tree; use the most common word from the your word cloud to see the tree in action. You can embed the word tree on your website or blog.

4. Create a map

There are a couple of ways to do this one. Let’s start with the easiest.

Go to Google Maps and log in. Create a new map; name and save it. To add markers to your map, zoom in to the location you want, then click and drag a marker from the top of the map to where it belongs. Use information from your résumé for each marker. (You can also click on the color of the pin to change its appearance.) When you’re done, you can embed the map on your website or blog.

For a map with a few more functions, like the one at left, set up a spreadsheet and use that to create a map. If you want to include examples of your work with the map, try creating a map with tabbed windows, using the same spreadsheet approach. In the column for the second tab, use HTML to call the image, like this:
<img src="URL of image or video" />

5. Create a timeline

There are a few ways to do this too — both of these are fairly easy.

Go to Dipity and log in (or create an account). Create a new timeline (they call them topics). Either delete the point that is automatically placed, or edit it with information from your résumé. Keep adding events until you’re done; you can also add images, links to stories and videos. (Dipity will also create a map from the information you add — just add a location to the events.) Dipity can be a bit quirky, and is starting to limit the number of timelines users can create, but you can embed the timeline on your website or blog.

To create a timeline like the one on the left, go to Timetoast and log in (or create an account). Create a new timeline and add events from your résumé. Keep adding events events until you’re done. You can add images and links to the events in the timeline (HTML is also allowed). You can embed the timeline on your website or blog.