Spreadsheets News & Articles

Happy anniversary to the spreadsheet! That's right, thirty years ago today Dan Bricklin helped dream up and release VisiCalc, the world's original spreadsheet.

In the last three decades Bricklin has continued to exercise his love for cells and grids via the Product Lead position for SocialCalc. Socialtext's (news, site) spreadsheet solution is integrated in their suite and can link data from other spreadsheets and workspace pages. Like their name suggests, the tool also attempts to reflect the changing times by including various social features as well:

"SocialCalc is the next logical step for the spreadsheet," Bricklin said. "As we move into the social world, as typified by a wiki where there is one current copy that everyone can work from, the spreadsheet needs to move there, too."

To celebrate the concept's dirty thirty, the company has just stripped SocialCalc of its beta status. Existing Socialtext customers can get the tool for US$ 3 per month, while new customers can enjoy the tool free of charge for 2010. As usual, there is also a free trial version for all the skeptical. 

More news coming on the second day of the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston. Socialtext (news, site) is offering their hosted social networking solution for free for organizations of up to 50 people. Along with the new free offering, they also announce the public beta of their social spreadsheet solution: SocialCalc.

If you are a salesforce.com user then you know how important it is to be able to analyze your data in a format that is easily understood and easily customized. eXpresso, provider of integrated spreadsheet functionality also understands these requirements.

Together salesforce.com and eXpresso have partnered to offer salesforce.com users a fully certified version of eXpresso.

EditGrid, purveyors of fine SaaS spreadsheet solutions, has issued a spanking new Spring release. EditGrid technology provides dynamic online spreadsheets which update in real time based on remote data. The new release focuses on empowering users to make better use of this technology through new mashups and to monetize their online resources through advertiser-oriented statistics gathering.

EditGrid, one of Google’s main rivals in the online spreadsheet department, is now available to users of hosted versions of the Confluence enterprise wiki from Atlassian.

You’ve heard the rumors. We reported on the speculation. Finally, Google has officially announced its paid application plan. For $50 per user per year, companies can outsource a significant portion, if not all, of their back end IT to the search behemoth.

This Enterprise wiki business is continuing its impressive momentum, and to little surprise. wikiCalc is just one demonstration of how much the wiki world has begun to offer businesses in terms of turning Web 2.0 tools and processes into tangible and manageable value.