A Spreadsheet Revolution

Computer spreadsheet programs have been around since 1979, when Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston created VisiCalc. The breakthrough program turned the Apple II into an electronic ledger, allowing users to enter rows and columns of numbers along with mathematical formulas. When a user changed a number, the formula would automatically recalculate.

That may seem elementary today, with millions of people using Microsoft Excel and other advanced spreadsheets, but it was a shot in the arm for the nascent personal computer industry and was the impetus for the Apple II being taken seriously as a business tool.

Although spreadsheets can handle formulas, they can also be used for basic textual information including time tables and schedules.

Now we have a new revolution in spreadsheets. Instead of just being solitary programs that run on your PC, two new experimental products work over the Internet, allowing you to not only dynamically update data over the web, but share your spreadsheet with others via the Net.

Last week Google Labs announced that it is testing a web-based spreadsheet for a limited number of testers, and a few days later, Software Garden released the beta version of wikiCalc. And the person who runs Software Garden - a one-man company in the Boston area - and wrote wikiCalc is none other than VisiCalc co-author Dan Bricklin.

The two products are both similar and different. They're similar in that they make it possible for people to collaborate on a spreadsheet. I'm excited about that prospect because I'm involved with a non-profit organization whose director is in another part of the country. I sometimes have to file expense reports and we've agreed to use a web-based spreadsheet so I can work on it on my end and the director can approve expenses on her end.

Such a tool would be great for any far-flung organization that has to work with words and numbers, such as a remote sales team, or even a soccer team that wants to keep track of game scores or schedules.

The big difference between the Google spreadsheet and the one from Bricklin's company is that the Google product is strictly web-based while Bricklin's takes a hybrid approach.

The Bricklin program can run on a company's server, on a web-hosted site or on a PC. The advantage of running it on a PC or a company's site is that you have control over who has access to the data.

I'm not suggesting that Google is going to be peering into people's spreadsheets but there's no telling whether the company might on some future date be in a situation in which it could be compelled to turn such data over to a government or other party, or be hit by hackers. That can happen at a company, too, but there are plenty of people in corporate America who feel better about storing data on their own servers than those run by other companies.

Speaking of PCs, wikiCalc runs on Windows, Mac and Unix. What's more it is "open source," which, according to Bricklin, means that there will always be a free version available and other programmers will be able to update and improve the code. Rather than fearing the prospect of other people messing around with his program, Bricklin is encouraging it, hoping others will make it better and adapt it for other purposes.

Another difference is that wikiCalc, in addition to performing calculations, is also designed to create web pages. A bowling league, for example, could use it to create its home page with a schedule, scores from past games and other information.

Having played with both programs, I can see why some people might prefer Google's approach. As long as you have an Internet connection, your spreadsheet is right there for you. Google, as you'd expect, also crafted a very easy to use program. It doesn't have nearly the bells and whistles of a packaged spreadsheet like Excel, but it handles the basic formulas that most people will need.

Neither wikiCalc nor the Google spreadsheet currently create graphs and charts, though there is a way to do that with WikiCalc by exporting the data to another program, such as Excel.

You can request access to the Google spreadsheet service by going to Google, typing in "Google Spreadsheet" and following the links. You'll need a Gmail mail account and you still might not get it any time soon. They're calling this a "limited test." Anyone can download a copy of wikiCalc by going to softwaregarden.com and clicking on the wikiCalc link.
By Larry Magid