Calcoolate - Ajax Calculator
by Michael Arrington on March 11, 2006

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.

Comments

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 :)

 

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

 

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

 

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.

 

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.

 
 

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.

 

“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?”

 

Excellent stuff. Really Helpful.

 

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

 

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

 

techcrunch has now officially jumped the shark.

 

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.

 

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?

 

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.

 

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.

 
 

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

 

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.

 
 

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

 

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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