Sunday, June 11, 2006

Google Spreadsheets

For a person in my line of work, the spreadsheet is a fact of everyday life. Lotus 1-2-3 was my best friend until Excel usurped that position.

Now, we have Google Spreadsheets.

It's currently a very bare-bones app, with limited formatting options and a clunky formula interface, but it's a good first step. If Google continues down this path with full-featured web-based competitors for Word, Powerpoint, Project and Visio, there will soon be little need for MS Office on a workstation.

Wasn't this what they were calling the "network computer" a few years ago?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

All of the necessary web applications to replace MS Office (except maybe Project) already exist.

Word Processing: Writely (now owned by Google), among many many others.

Process Diagrams & Flowcharts (ie. Visio): Gliffy

Database: Lazybase

As for powerpoint, there are various slideshow web apps, although I'm sure if any of them have PP-like creation functionality.

A great place to start if you want to track the world of web applications is adding Solution Watch to your feed aggregator.