Current mood:	curious
Current music:	The Blue Danube by J. Strauss
Entry tags:	spreadsheets

In Search of a Web-Based Spreadsheet

If you've been reading my recent posts, you already know that I've been speculating that maybe Google is buying out companies in an effort to assemble an Internet-powered spreadsheet to kill Microsoft Office. The hypothesis is that if Google offers a top quality office productivity suite with all the bells and whistles for free, it will disrupt considerably Microsoft's cash flow. So far we had found all the components that fit the characteristics to build a web-based productivity suite--except one. We were after an on-line spreadsheet and we found not one, but four. Let's take a look.

If I was able to find these babies, surely by now, Google's savvy programmers have already found and studied, every single row of their codes. I'm almost sure they've also picked a winner. The next step is to buy the company and start building the creature, just like a XXIst century Frankenstein movie.




In my "What if" scenario, the candidates are: iRows, Num Sum, Numbler and Zoho Sheet. There could be more, I don't know. Let's take a closer look at each one of them.


1. iROWS

iRows is a great solution for creating web-based spreadsheets that has similar functionality to the popular office application, Microsoft Excel. With iRows, you can save spreadsheets online, keep it privately, share them with groups, and let anyone view them. You can perform formulas, formatting, and amazingly even graphs.

Here are some of the features you get. You can easily search for data sheets and then easily find it again by going to the recent section of iRows, which will show the spreadsheets that you’ve recently looked at. You can easily create groups and share your spreadsheets with them. Sometimes you just want to make a private spreadsheet but maybe allow a few people to see it. You can also give others access to edit your spreadsheets making them into collaborative documents. It functions great in Internet Explorer and Safari, but seems to fail in Firefox. Shame on you, iRows!


2. Num Sum

Num Sum can be defined as a sharable social spreadsheet. NumSum has been around for a while, but I found that it existed two days ago; meaning it has had little if no promotion. What is it? NumSum is a web-based spreadsheet application with some pretty cool social aspects tied in, meaning you can share progress reports, track expenses for your business, or any other number of things you could do with a desktop spreadsheet like Excel. Like its desktop cousin, NumSum lets you input formulas, links, and other information into a spreadsheet. If you want, you could even post the spreadsheet to your blog. A neat spread sheet prepared with Num Sum is Fifa World Cup 2006 . If you like soccer, you're going to like it; it's quite pertinent with the upcoming Soccer World Cup in Germany this year.


3. Numbler

Numbler is the web based spreadsheet that enables instantaneous collaboration with anyone on your project team. With Numbler, multiple users can work with a spreadsheet, view changes in real time, and discuss changes. Your sheets are accessible from any web browser, anywhere in the world, and are easily shared with your colleagues and partners. This is the spirit of Web 2 applications.

This is an early beta release. Numbler should not be used for anything important or mission critical or to store confidential information.


4. Zoho Sheet

Zoho Sheet is a promising on line spreadsheet application which gives you a traditional spreadsheet in a non-traditional way. What do I mean by those choice of words? In addition to being fully compatible with Microsoft Excel, it offers user-friendly features for Internet population who want to consume lot of data from the Internet into their spreadsheets.

Zoho Sheet pretends to solve criticized shortcomings of traditional spreadsheets desktop applications, such as:

--Sharing is pain. Not collaboration friendly. You cannot share it online with your friends, colleagues and clients. You might be sending it now as e-mail attachments.

--Built for non-Internet users? Absolutely. You can't integrate any Internet information or mashup with cool web services. How about the spreadsheet integrating sales data from Salesforce.com, your yahoo finance data or your favorite books from Amazon?

--Not Internet friendly. You can't access your spreadsheet from anywhere or any Web browser.


Features currently supported:

1. Create web spreadsheets (zoho sheets) and manage them online.
2. Import any Excel spreadsheet and use it online.
3. Export zoho sheet as Excel/html.
4. Use any Excel style functions (sum, avg, etc). For Autosum alone, Zoho Sheet provides a quick button on the toolbar. For the rest of the functions you can type in the formula.
5. Format and decorate your cells with font styles, colors and different alignments.
6. Copy Paste from external sources (Excel, html, etc).
7. Copy Paste within the zoho sheet. Formulas will be copied relatively. Very useful when you want to apply same formula for multiple cells.
8. Tag your zoho sheets. You can tag and find your (and other public) spreadsheets with ease.
9. Share your zoho sheets with your friends and control their access levels.
10. Publish your zoho sheet as public for anyone to find it and use it.
11. Feel the same user experience as using Microsoft Excel.

If you want to try your hands on the Beta, provide your e-mail address at S-p-r-e-a-d Sheets Online and they will send you an invitation.

These are the alternatives that I was able to round up. I wonder which one is the lucky winner by Google standards, if any. Do you think I'm on the right track, or lost in the neck of the woods in Timbuktu?




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