The underappreciated Web spreadsheet EditGrid is getting a useful and cool new feature: built-in lookups to online resources. For example, if you want your online spreadsheet to display the current stock price of a company, or maybe its site's Alexa rank, you can now easily code that into your formulas.
Other functions give you data from the CIA World Factbook (natural gas reserves in Thailand, anyone?), baseball stats via Strikeiron, TechCrunch's Crunchbase company database, and other interesting info. If you want to get fancy, there are also functions to pull data straight from Web pages.
EditGrid has a new collection of functions that pull live data from various online sources.
All the data you pull in from these functions can serve as input to other formulas, which opens up interesting analysis possibilities. Say you're trying to get a read on a start-up you're thinking of investing in, and efficiency in getting eyeballs to the site matters to you. A simple formula of monthly page views (from Compete) and number of employees (from Crunchbase) might do that for you. Assuming you trust those data sources, of course.
I did find the menu of data sources a bit limiting outside the realms of financial information and Web analytics, but the concept of adding online data sources directly into a spreadsheet's function library is spot on, and EditGrid spokespeople confirm that more sources will added to the lineup shortly. I hope EditGrid also opens up the application programming interface so people at other sites can mash their online data into the EditGrid libraries.
Google Docs has a subset of these functions, but not the breadth of data that EditGrid now offers.
Previous review: EditGrid: A nice competitor to Google Spreadsheets.
- ThinkFree now publishes straight to the Web
- ThinkFree, or not
Previous EditGrid coverage:
- Under the Radar: Battle of the collaboration tools, tryptophan
- EditGrid: A nice competitor to Google Spreadsheets
[via Startup Squad]
Tomorrow, ThinkFree is announcing a partnership with EditGrid to integrate EditGrid's spreadsheet service into ThinkFree's Web-based office suite. EditGrid's free, Web-based spreadsheet service will take the place of ThinkFree's Quick Edit Calc application. Both services are Webware 100 nominees in the Productivity category.
With the partnership comes a profit-sharing agreement between the two companies; however, the real icing on the cake is for ThinkFree users who will get to use EditGrid without having to sign up to another service.
While it's not a merger or an acquisition, the last memorable integration of two popular online office apps was when Google integrated Writely into Google Docs and Spreadsheets late last year. Edit Calc enthusiasts should not be too disappointed with the news, though; ThinkFree will reportedly be delivering an updated and hopefully improved version of Edit Calc later down the road.
Previous ThinkFree coverage:
Presenters for the post-lunch session today focused on two challenges. First was how to help people simultaneously collaborate on projects. Equally important was how to keep a room full of sleepy bloggers, analysts, and venture capitalists awake and alert after a lunch of turkey sandwiches. Luckily, we've played with all four of these applications before, and so we stuck with the roast beef.
Editgrid kicked off the round of presentations. Instead of PowerPoint, they used a tabbed spreadsheet in Editgrid to present. One of the really great features of Editgrid, which we've discussed before, is the option to archive and roll-back various versions of your work--something you don't get in Excel without managing a folder of file back-ups. Also notable is an Editgrid spreadsheet containing a feature comparison between Editgrid to Google Spreadsheets. It's one the most popularly shared spreadsheets on the service.
SmartSheet is another shared spreadsheet application, but it is aimed at small teams. Smartsheet has a handy feature for tracking and easily pulling the history for each individual cell in a spreadsheet. This provides several extended possibilities beyond just entering data. You still have to hit a button to save your work, which is something we've griped about in the past.
Wrike was a good follower to SmartSheet's presentation. Wrike is similar to SmartSheet, but has the added benefit of giving users the option to push tasks to the Wrike project tool whenever they get cc'd via e-mail. See our hands-on demo here..
Xcellery is the only tool presenting today that uses Microsoft Excel. In fact, it does something that--even 11 versions later--you still can't do with the industry standard application. The one thing Xcellery doesn't do is real-time viewing of another person while he or she is typing on a cell--something we've gushed about with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Luckily, the service will alert you if the other person is working on it and will give you the option to choose which person gets the edit. Previous coverage here.
Stay tuned as the next group up handles sharing through the Web, which should be interesting to watch after Zoho's announcement yesterday of their new meeting application..
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