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« You don't run a museum | Blog Home | The Because Effect »

Where is the websheet?

I need this, which means you might need it as well.

I need a web-based spreadsheet (like google spreadsheet) or a plug in to Excel that makes it easy to do the following:

Calculate the contents of a field based on info from the web.

For example, let's say you have a list of 20 brand names. This 'websheet' could automatically go to Google and return the URL of the first match of each search in a field right next to the name. Or return the number of Google matches. Or return the RSS feed of the nearest match of a blog on technorati.

Or it could go to Yahoo Finance and automatically look up the current stock price of a ticker symbol.

Or it could take a list of book titles and return the cover art from Amazon.

Once the infrastructure is there, building the particular routines would be a lot of fun for the hackers who are way smarter than me.

If the web is going to be as pervasive as we've all been describing it, it needs to get out of the browser and fast. I have no doubt that someone with talent and time could find the pieces necessary to do this, but I wonder why Google didn't do it already or why someone hasn't disrupted the spreadsheet market once and for all by offering it as a simple (and possibly free) product.

[PS I got a  lot of ideas (Excel, etc.) that weren't right--too complicated--but then Vivek Puri pointed us to EditGrid. They're not there yet, it needs more power, but they're getting close! Thanks, guys.]

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Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Where is the websheet?:

» Manipulation from Who Knows?
When someone has a need I feel a pathological need to help. Seth Godin posted about needing a web-based spreadsheet that would do some special things (bringing in data from various website queries). So what do I do? I do some research to see how hard i... [Read More]

» Websheets from WebMetricsGuru
Seth Godin had an idea about using EditGrid or Google Spreadsheets to pull data out of search results in more meaningful ways that are now possible.But whensomeone tries to research how to do it and finds it can be done,sorta,... [Read More]

» EditGrid beta 13 released with some new features from My Uninstalled Life
The excellent EditGrid has released a new beta 13 which includes some of the following new features: An EditGrid Finder (for searching content on all public readable books or your owned books) Export PDF Text overflow OpenDocument (.sxc) format suppo... [Read More]

» EditGrid Bookshelf from EditGrid Developers Blog
Two weeks ago, Seth Godin asked for a websheet that could take a list of book titles and return the cover art from Amazon. The post also mentioned EditGrid. Today, Ive got some free time to re-visit this blog post. Is this possible? I asked one ... [Read More]

» MORE WEB APPS from Huey's World
UPDATE: In a recent post, I talked some of COOL web-based applications currently available. Just wanted to add EditGrid to the list, which was mentioned article by Seth Godin.~rick [Read More]

« You don't run a museum | Blog Home | The Because Effect »