Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

VisiCalc Creator Developing WikiCalc

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the i-desire-a-wiki-about-pie dept.

An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet has an article about a new wiki that is trying to combine the collaboration of wiki technology and the data manipulation attributes of a spreadsheet. The creator of VisiCalc, Dan Bricklin, is working on an alpha version of WikiCalc for sometime late in February." From the article: "'It holds a lot of promise, both because it's using the spreadsheet metaphor, which is the one thing people know for working with quantitative information and because 'there's nobody better in the world to build this thing,' said Ross Mayfield, CEO of collaboration software maker SocialText. To Mayfield, WikiCalc is the answer to a problem that has been percolating for some time in the world of IT. That is, he said, that spreadsheets have traditionally been a single-user application screaming for functionality that could let multiple people edit data quickly and easily. "

4 of 139 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Yup, exactly what buisness needs by caffeinemessiah · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Perhaps many business won't need it, but I know a lot people who will. The combination of a web interface with easy and intuitive (read: not MS Office's reviewing features) multi-user functionality could help, for example, a manager easily collect numbers from multiple people on a team. For the manager, all the data is in one location as it comes in and accessible when he wants it, not as emails with separate Excel attachments which he has to paste together. Or if I'm collecting data in my lab but want to review it at home, then I can just use an online spreadsheet and don't have to do the usual transfer via network/ftp/usb/email/cvs. Believe me, the applications for online tools ARE out there -- there's a reason Microsoft is releasing their uncharacteristic Windows Live nonsense.

    --
    An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
  2. a way to put things in columns by Expert+Determination · · Score: 3, Interesting
    So true. I wonder if someone could release a spreadsheet for a few hundred bucks that has no computational facilities only. Just arranges things in a grid and allows you to choose your font. That would probably satisfy 95% of users of Excel.

    Personally, I was disappointed when I found that spreadsheets only ran the formulas forward so that if I typed in A1=2*B2 it wouldn't work out B2 from A1. Seems almost as useless as formattable grid to me.

    --
    "The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
  3. that's the point! by poptones · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But "supercharging" spreadsheets won't really be providing power to the people that need it. The people that most need power over large amounts of data have hundreds of people working in their IT departments.

    Your last sentence summed it up very well: companies presently pay a LOT of people simply to move data from app to app. A collaborative spreadsheet could change workflows in significant ways that we, having never before used such an app, cannot readily predict.

    I think it's a bloody fantastic idea, and so simple and obvious it seems odd to think such an app doesn't yet exist.

  4. TurboDbAdmin? by poopie · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sounds a lot like the turbodbadmin demo to me... just with support for formulas.

    http://turboajax.com/turbodbadmin.html

    in other words, "ajax-based web spreadsheet that uses a databse for backend datastore"

    Great idea - it effectively could kill excel for always-connected corporate environments where people are constantly fighting with different spreadsheet revisions and 2nd hand data.

    Give users the interface they know and mostly seem to love. No stupid ODBC drivers necessary. Works in any modern browser. Give the company accurate data in a real database. Win-Win.