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March 11, 2006

Calcoolate - Ajax Calculator

Michael Arrington

24 comments »

Calcoolate is a very slick online calculator that uses Ajax to minimize page refreshes and maintain a log of your previous calculations on the main screen. In other words, its fast. The service allows advanced functions and has a separate area for conversions (temperatures, distance, speed, weight etc.). This won’t be a $30 million Google acquisition, but its a cool tool that some people might find useful.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 11th, 2006 at 2:06 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Web 2.0 - Что нового? » Blog Archive » Calcoolate - Онлайн-калькулятор

    May 3rd, 2006 at 3:17 am

  2. Web 2.0 - Что нового? » Blog Archive » Calcoolate - Онлайн-калькулятор

    May 3rd, 2006 at 11:35 pm

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  1. Wisam Daoud

    March 11th, 2006 at 2:20 pm

    The functionality is cool, but the user interface can use a little work. I dislike all the distracting advertising all over these new sites (which no one ever click on any ways.) People need to get a little more creative in finding ways to make money. At least design sites, to have advertising in a less intrusive manner. TechCrunch is a good example :)

  2. Andy Kim

    March 11th, 2006 at 2:34 pm

    I enjoy discovering most of the companies featured here. I applaud the editors for their fine job.

    That said, today I’m very surprised to see Calcoolate here. Technically, it is not even AJAX, because the entire thing is Javascript—it only does the “J” part of AJAX. Not to say that it should use asynchronous XMLHttpRequest calls because that would be absolutely unnecessary for calculating 1+1. These are the sorts of tasks that are much better suited for desktop applications because the task requires no external data*. Now, it would be a totally different thing if Calcoolate somehow leveraged the network effect to build a better calculator. Just being a “webapp”, doesn’t make it better.

    Please don’t let a slow news day bring down the quality of the site.

    * Except currency conversion, but that is not the main point of Calcoolate

  3. anon

    March 11th, 2006 at 2:35 pm

    ouch…do you really think this is worth featuring on techcrunch? I really hope u start writing about some strong companies with some clear market opportunities

  4. anonymous

    March 11th, 2006 at 3:12 pm

    resounding the same opinions above…hope u guys are listening and aim to protect the last remaining parts of your credibility with your audiences, else it will disappear as soon as it got built.

  5. Travis

    March 11th, 2006 at 3:42 pm

    I really think that the best feature on this site are the conversions. I honestly doubt I would ever make the effort to change my calculator, because this doesn’t really offer any new features.

    So I would suggest to calcoolate that they make the conversions the highlight of the site. I constantly convert measurments and money, to me that is a very useful feature.

  6. web20guy

    March 11th, 2006 at 4:40 pm

    Mike, will you use it?

  7. Saul Weiner

    March 11th, 2006 at 5:00 pm

    What does this give you that your windows calc or an online speardsheet doesn’t - history?

    Is that enough to make me use it. probably not.

  8. luc

    March 11th, 2006 at 5:26 pm

    “This won’t be a $30 million Google acquisition, but its a cool tool that some people might find useful.”

    This reminded me the question of “how much did Writely cost to Google?”

  9. Ebrahim

    March 11th, 2006 at 6:27 pm

    Excellent stuff. Really Helpful.

  10. Les

    March 11th, 2006 at 9:43 pm

    16 cups = 1.0010215894127568 gallon (US)- most helpful.

  11. Quell

    March 11th, 2006 at 10:06 pm

    Hrm, this is probably an interesting new idea. Someone should have thought of this a while ago.

  12. john

    March 12th, 2006 at 7:33 am

    techcrunch has now officially jumped the shark.

  13. Bob Aman

    March 12th, 2006 at 10:21 am

    If it were able to answer this one correctly:

    e^(pi*sqrt(-1))

    Then I might’ve admitted that the service was worthy of notice. But seriously, this is a novelty site with lousy page design (apologies to the creator as they probably put some effort into it) that can’t do anything a simple calculator destop widget thing can’t do better. What’s the point if TechCrunch posts about every single site that gets suggested? Next thing you know, pretty looking personal webpages will be being reviewed and the signal to noise ratio will be rediculous, even deafening.

  14. Simen

    March 12th, 2006 at 3:16 pm

    Javascript calculators have been around as long as Javascript. There are probably more Javascript calculators out there than there are blog posts that include the phrase ‘Web 2.0′. What makes this newsworthy?

  15. Kevin

    March 12th, 2006 at 4:58 pm

    I think the comments are a bit harsh. Sure, the calculator is not the coolest new kid on the block and does not have the sex appeal that a site like, say, 30boxes.com does. But still, nice, clean apps like this can be great if they were incorporated into something like, say, goowy.com’s online desktop.

  16. riccardo

    March 13th, 2006 at 12:29 am

    I’m using it daily at work.

    Faster than Windows Calc, recording of calculations, click on operation and result brings them to the input box 8good for mistaekes and for sequential calculations), always open in Firefox tab.

  17. Devang

    March 14th, 2006 at 1:31 am

    RPN anyone?

  18. Bill nadraszky

    March 14th, 2006 at 6:50 am

    I actually just use google if I need a quick calculator. Or (gasp) type calc into the address bar in my windows taskbar.

  19. Jay

    March 14th, 2006 at 6:59 am

    Google’s calculator provides the same service (as well as the conversion and the exchange rates).

    Moreover, every computer connected to the internet (at least linux/windows, dunno for Macs) and accessing this site have also access to a calculator program which will be faster, …

    As pointed in http://www.codinghorror.com/bl.....00440.html there is a need for a better calculator. So they might find a niche here, but nothing interesting for a rather large majority of people.

  20. Tiancai

    March 17th, 2006 at 6:02 pm

    Needs RPN! :(

  21. matpe

    April 2nd, 2006 at 12:01 am

    Noticed calcr.com a couple of minutes ago. Seems to do the same thing, but without the horrible colors.

  22. Chirag Shukla

    May 5th, 2006 at 8:53 pm

    AJAX (or just J) can intrigue a new user. One user thought the calculator was great and started clicking the buttons randomly and quickly causing the browser (IE) to go unresponsive. Had this been a form submission that would take a few milliseconds to load back up, the user would carefully click the buttons. AJAX gives the user the opportunity to do stupid things like keep on clicking log several times or click on random buttons hoping that AJAX/J will give results in a flash - well, sometimes response time is slow and then the user gets frustrated that his/her browser isnt working well (lol). See what I am saying?

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