Comments on: Web spreadsheets for humans and machines

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By: extentechjohn

extentechjohn — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 21:00:13 +0000

Hey team, DabbleDB shutdown is a sad thing to hear. It is an argument for having a data-driven solution that you can “take with you”.

The open source Sheetster web spreadsheet is not only available for immediate download to run as a server on your own or virtual machine, but it can be launched in minutes from StandingCloud.com.

Seriously, open source and virtualized servers mean you should never have to host your data in a vulnerable location again… nor should you have to settle for using a public service.

Open source services in the private cloud folks. Check it out.

-john

By: Chip Nowacek

Chip Nowacek — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:47:22 +0000

Any chance, Jon, you could comment on the Dabble DB shutdown? There are a whole bunch of folks feeling abandoned and angry.

By: David

David — Sat, 18 Dec 2010 08:26:30 +0000

Thanks for mentioning this.The Excel Web App is able to show the contents of tables and ranges as OData. Good one…

http://godwinsblog.cdtech.in/2010/12/microsoft-office-excel-add-in-plug-in.html

By: John McMahon

John McMahon — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 21:33:01 +0000

Check out my open source project Sheetster!:
http://sf.net/projects/sheetster

Or use it right now:
http://sheetster.com

It’s not only an open source Web Spreadsheet (yes!), but it round-trips with Excel really well as it is based upon the most robust Java Excel SDK out there — ExtenXLS.

The best part about Sheetster is that it is Open Source and was built for developers, so the REST api is awesome (if I do say so myself,) and it includes stuff like JSON data mapping (into spreadsheet cells) and automating Docs with a JavaScript API.

Here’s a link to a document on automation using the REST api:
http://extentech.com/nimbledocs/12252/2009/July/14/using_the_docsfree_sheetster_rest_api

This is some superior technology from a company that has been doing Java Spreadsheets way before Google docs was invented, and we are committed to Open Source which benefits all of us.

By: Kevin Curry

Kevin Curry — Sun, 15 Aug 2010 04:01:49 +0000

A question that arises, is: should we start teaching analysts, journalists, and researchers YQL? Some are already leaning in that direction: http://bit.ly/bhfnXJ

By: Jeremy

Jeremy — Fri, 13 Aug 2010 17:46:16 +0000

Surprised that YQL hasn’t been mentioned at all here – it allows you to query web-based resources in a SQL-like fashion:

http://developer.yahoo.com/yql/

By: Kevin Curry

Kevin Curry — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 04:10:13 +0000

Jon,

I stumbled across this post!

My scenario is more easily solved if the publisher publishes a well-formed XHTML document instead of mal-formed HTML. Such a page can be dynamically generated, too. That is what I truly seek. If the table is well-formed XHTML then we can transform the data into many more views than can be provided with charts widgets, alone. Although charts would not be as simple to create.

But switch gears for a moment and consider the perspective of analyst/journalist/researcher who daily encounters tables and other (seemingly) structured data in documents; HTMLs, PDFs, Word docs…

When I say, “…at minimum, copy-and-paste-able into a spreadsheet” I mean to suggest (if poorly so) that this how analysts/journalists/researchers often operate. And copy-and-paste is all we should expect in order for analysts/journalists/researchers to “reverse engineer” data from documents in order to be usable again as data, i.e., in formulae & charts.

Does that make sense?

Ultimately, my view is that if a newspaper is going to be in the data and data visualization publishing business it should publish structured data, not just HTML documents and images.

Best,
Kevin

By: sundeep

sundeep — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 08:48:57 +0000

I came across this DIDO an MIT project. http://projects.csail.mit.edu/exhibit/Dido
which lets it users to customize and edit data!!

By: Psybertron Asks

Psybertron Asks — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 07:05:03 +0000

[...] analysis from John Udell of Excel and Google Spreadsheets from a web publishing [...]

By: Transform your iPad into a second computer monitor | Becoming Cultured

Transform your iPad into a second computer monitor | Becoming Cultured — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 21:05:19 +0000

[...] Web spreadsheets for humans and machines « Jon Udell [...]

By: Jamie Thomson

Jamie Thomson — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 00:16:55 +0000

Damn those crappy Spaces URIs :(

By: Jamie Thomson

Jamie Thomson — Mon, 05 Jul 2010 00:16:17 +0000

Jon,
Thanks for picking up the thread, Chris and I will keep hammering on the door until we can break it down. In the meantime Chris has done a follow-up blog post for anyone that might be interested.

The Excel Web App and its missing API
(http://cwebbbi.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7B84B0F2C239489A!7691.entry)

-Jamie

By: David Karger

David Karger — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 03:00:30 +0000

Right, visualization doesn’t have to entail data release, and some authors may specifically want to hide their data (see above blog post). But as developers, we could and did choose a design that releases data by default. Such a design leverages the large mass of apathetic users who don’t care enough about the open data question to change the default. Making this design choice is a powerful way for developers of visualization tools to contribute to the spread of open data