Skip to main content

wikiCalc

Dan Bricklin [the author of VisiCalc] has come up with another brilliant idea called "wikiCalc." Here's how he describes it at the alpha test site

"The wikiCalc program is a web authoring tool for pages that include data that is more than just unformatted prose. It combines some of the ease of authoring and multi-person editing of a wiki with the familiar visual formatting and data organizing metaphor of a spreadsheet..."

Daniel Terdiman of CNET News.com wrote about it here today. WikiCalc kind of looks to me like a poor mans [open-source] version of what I think Quicken is trying to do with QuickBase and what Dan suggests Microsoft might be trying to do with Grove. Some people will object to putting the data in spreadsheets out in the open like this but the dirty little secret of private spreadsheets on individual PCs is that they are full of errors and inconsistencies. A little openness [in other words transparency] is likely to be a very good thing both for collaboration and for accuracy & reliability.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Forty Years

My wife Joy and I celebrated our 40 th wedding anniversary this past weekend with our children and grand-children. We were on lovely Sea Island, Georgia watching this spectacular sunrise and wondering how it was possible that forty years could have gone by so quickly. We had a lot of fun telling all the old stories about how we met, and courted, and married, and brought up the kids. Lots of laughs and a few tears as well. We've been through good times and bad together. We've both worked hard, had a few disappointments, but basically have accomplished mostly good things. We've had good health, loving families, good friends, three fine sons we're very proud of, wonderful daughter's-in-law who are perfect for our boys, and four of the best grandchildren ever. Life doesn't really get any better than that. We've really been blessed and we thank God for that. Now we're working to keep our health and live to celebrate forty more.

Barry Schwartz - The Paradox of Choice

MediaPost Publications - Americans Get More Channels, Watch Fewer Of Them, Especially Broadcast - 03/13/2006 Ironically, Barry Schwartz spoke at PC Forum last night about the Paradox of Choice, and what did I wake up to this morning. Another possible example of too much choice in the channels people have to choose from on television. I wonder whether the "a la carte" crowd has thought about this problem. I'll have to ask Prof. Schwartz about that today.