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April 17, 2009 12:35 PM PDT

Mash up data like music playlists with Verifiable

by Josh Lowensohn

Data visualizations are a great way to make something complex more easily understood from any spreadsheet or table. Verifiable, a free visualization tool does just that, by quickly organizing uploaded data sets into charts that can be customized and manipulated using a drag and drop control scheme that feels a lot like making a playlist in iTunes.

What's interesting here is that the service is putting both the charts and the data in the same place, so you can go behind the curtain to double check to see the source numbers. The other day when we wrote a follow up on the TechCrunch50 and Demo conferences and showed what was live and what was dead, we included charts, but in order to back everything up we had to drop the source spreadsheet in there, too. With Verifiable, the source data would have been there, but only seen when users clicked on the charts.

There are number of ways to get your data onto the service. You can upload from your hard drive, or paste the data by pasting it into a text box. However my favorite is by linking it up to Google Docs and Spreadsheets which lets you suck in your data from the cloud. You can even narrow it down by what part of the spreadsheet you want to get the numbers from.

I'll be honest here, I don't have a whole lot of use for this in my daily routine, but compared to some other data comparison services like Tablefy, iCharts and Swivel, Verifiable's Web app feel seems more attuned to folks who need to remix and re-order data they already have.

Here's a sample chart. To see all the fun data behind it, you'll have to click on it.


Josh Lowensohn writes for Webware.com, CNET's blog about Web applications and services. E-mail Josh, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/Josh.
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by akljsdj April 18, 2009 10:26 AM PDT
At About 1982 It All Meets, Weird.
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by molotov April 20, 2009 11:33 AM PDT
I was there in 1982. thought about making a portable computer that people could place on their laps, but instead of investing my college tuition into that I bought myself a nice watch and a new car. I also thought about shoes and figured I buy one pair and get rich by wearing it, but then next year I needed another pair. Really annoying.
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