Friedbeef’s Tech

After acquiring the online Word Processor Writely earlier this year, Google takes another swipe at Microsoft’s Office suite by releasing an online spreadsheet competitor to Excel. I got the chance to play with it earlier today after it’s preview release a few hours ago, so here’s a quick run down of what to expect.

Don’t expect it to replace Excel. This is nowhere close in terms of functionality, and is not meant to be, given that this is still considered a first generation online spreadsheet. It is worth noting however that there are already plenty of free online spreadsheets around like NumSum, Zoho Sheet, and my personal favourite - Irows.

The interface is clean, and gives a LOT of screen real estate for your work, in fact more than any of the three rival services described above. Speed is respectable, and you should have no trouble getting simple spreadsheets up and running.

Functionality: Google Spreadsheets vs Irows

Here are some of the functions which I missed in Google Spreadsheets found in Irows

• Any sort of Graphing
• Ability to add images to the spreadsheet
• The ability to apply formulas simply by dragging cells
• The ability to merge cells vertically (While I can merge them across…Why???)
• The ability to share by publishing the spreadsheet on your website
• Saving to Open Office Format

Here are some of the functions which Google Spreadsheets has, and Irows doesn’t:

• Real Time Multi User Editing. This is the “killer feature” in collaboration. While other spreadsheets will allow sharing, only one person can work on the sheet at once. In Google Spreadsheets, multiple people can work on it at the same time, with changes shown to other people in real time. Comes with a chat window also, so you can discuss changes with your team.
• Interactive ability to use formulas across multiple sheets (Irows requires you to type in the sheet labels, Google allows you to select them like Excel)
• More interactive formula selection. (Irows formulas are just text which you have to type in)
• Ability to freeze panes eg. to maintain certain rows on top

In conclusion, Google Spreadsheets it seems that it is comparable to the current offering of online spreadsheets, with it’s real time editing features really breaking new ground in this product sphere. It will however be interesting however to see how Google integrates this to their other services.

Related Links:

Google Spreadsheets
Google Spreadsheets Preview

Updated: 8th June (Corrected the statement above which originally said Irows could not refer to other sheets)

• Please leave a comment... (5)

One of the reasons why I have stuck to the Ipod in the wake of cheaper music players is that the Itunes software is simply a joy to use.

Managing playlists are a pain, and Itunes Smart Playlists allows me to tell Itunes “This is how I want to listen to my music” once, and from then on let the software handle what songs to put in my Ipod everytime I sync the device.

Here are 3 quick smart playlist ideas, which I currently use, and you can try to use to enhance your musical experience.

Playlist Idea #1: Songs you like but don’t often listen to
All Songs Rated 4-5 Stars, sorted by least recently played.

Playlist Idea #2: Songs you have not heard before
Songs never listened to, sorted by least recently added to your Itunes library.

Playlist Idea #3: Songs that should be in your favourites list but are not
All songs not rated, sorted by most frequently played.

Every time you sync your Ipod, the songs on these lists update itself based on your listening habits. Experiment further by adding multiple rules within a single smart playlist (eg. Filter down favourites to only rock songs), and even combining multiple smart playlists (eg. Favourite R&B Songs + least frequently played pop songs).

What are your favourite smart playlist ideas?

[tags] itunes, ipod, apple, music [/tags]

• Please leave a comment... (2)

Where would you look if you wanted to track down an old friend on the internet? Friendster? Blogs? Images? Myspace? Google? Facebook? Why choose one? Stalkerati.com is a meta site which brings the search features of all these engines together. Stalking Tracking down old friends has never been this easy :)

• Please leave a comment...