Online spreadsheet software provider EditGrid today is rolling out a set of enhancements including analytics and mashup functionality that adds to the image retrieval capability we wrote about last month.
The new analytics (shown to the left) will let spreadsheet owners track views and visits over a spreadsheet’s lifetime.
The new mashup functionality will let you dynamically import graphs from Google Charts, Yahoo Finance, Reuters, Alexa, and Compete using simple in-cell functions.
EditGrid is additionally debuting a beta version of its Excel plugin, which can be used to import to and export from Excel, allowing for offline editing.
Finally, EditGrid now offers a set of over thirty templates with which you can start building your spreadsheets.
I think with this new set of analytics, it’ll have the ‘one up’ per se on Google Docs. I like it!
Agree that it is superior to Google Docs, but then again most online spreadsheets are as well.
Problem for these folks is reaching critical mass, traffic of 40k uniques won’t build a big user base and users are reluctant to trust their data with a firm that might not be in biz for the long term.
so far the coolest online spreadsheet ever seen !!
may be a real threat the MS Office business. MS should take on this company asap or they are gone ! [;)]
Mark, thanks for the post.
Judo:
Can’t agree more on critical mass. Although 40k is an underestimate because the EditGrid technology is also powering the online spreadsheet features at CentralDesktop and Atlassian’s hosted Confluence wiki. We also have a Japanese version run under different domain name: http://www.onsheet.net
Our strategy is quite simple now – do what the users want AND spend as little as possible to achieve that (Thanks Paul Graham). Think about this… after two years from now, we are still doing all the right things we should do for our users. This is the EditGrid way to establish trust.
Here’s an online presentation covering the features of the Feb release:
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http://docs.goo...p;skipauth=true
(we don’t have presentation, so use Google doc.
Here’s the changelog for this release:
http://www.edit.../site/changelog
We use a in house copy of editgrid for collaboration and tracking internally as well as providing information to external clients and I must say these guys got it right. The only feature they are lacking that I would like to see, would be a zohoesque offline work feature, maybe with google gears. I only say this because there import/export tool doesn’t merge data, but rather overwrites what is currently stored online.
All these high tech gimmicks and yet they don’t support the most basic functions users have been requesting for months:
- keyboard shortcuts (CTRL+DOWN, CTRL+* etc..) and keyboard accelerators (ALT+d+f+f for ex)
- simple auto filter
- pivot tables?
- large spreadsheets (>2MB)
- Google gears
For sure they offer a lot of functionnality for those niche users
The only feature they are lacking that I would like to see, would be a zohoesque offline work feature, maybe with google gears.
@Judo: Can’t agree more on critical mass. Although 40k is an underestimate because the EditGrid technology is also powering the online spreadsheet features at CentralDesktop and Atlassian’s hosted Confluence wiki. We also have a Japanese version run under different domain name: onsheet.net
Our strategy is quite simple now – do what the users want AND spend as little as possible to achieve that (Thanks Paul Graham). Think about this… after two years from now, we are still doing all the right things we should do for our users. This is the EditGrid way to establish trust.
@Cutter: Thanks for your kind words and support. For offline access, we think that the answer should be either Excel or Gnumeric. Our Excel plugin is trying to tackle the offline access problem.
@Olivier: Thanks for the reminder of these. We support keyboard shortcut quite extensively already, will keep working on the missing one. We’re targeting to support auto-filter. Pivot tables is difficult. Larger spreadsheets are supported if you sign up our subscription services. Google Gears is not our preferred way to do offline access, our current answer is Excel.
@David: Just wanted to tell you guys to keep up the good work. I think you guys there know me as Paul, I usually deal with Chan I believe. Also I would like to add, if anyone is thinking about buying the in house licensing, these guys are amazing with support. They will help you with anything, from migrations, to database updates. I was thoroughly impressed with how responsive these guys are, if you can afford the international call rates! An in the US number for support would be helpful, but still not complaining these guys are first class all the way! Hopefully, they will give me the iphone update soon. Still patiently waiting….
Can someone explain how the concept of mashups can possibly apply to spreadsheets? I hope it’s not just another name for OLE.
@EH: I think what you are seeing now at EditGrid is very basic mashups – fetching of graphs from other web sites according to parameters in a spreadsheet function.
Much more exciting things are coming in future releases which will help exploring what’s possible in a spreadsheet.
It took a while, but auto filter is now available in EditGrid.