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

50th Anniversary

This past May my wife and I celebrated our 50th Wedding Anniversary. The time has passed quickly but it certainly doesn't seem like 50 years. Like most, we've had our ups and downs in fifty years, but on the whole have been blessed with good health, three fine sons and nine grandchildren. Looking forward to the next chapter.

Review: The Prophet

The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran My rating: 5 of 5 stars View all my reviews