Fivetran, a new Y Combinator-backed startup that is launching today, wants to bring spreadsheets into the modern age and make it easier for users to work with messy data and analyze large amounts of information. Most people, for better or worse, use their spreadsheets as databases, and Fivetran acknowledges this by combining SQL-like queries with standard spreadsheet functions and statistical… → Read More
Y Combinator Summer 2012 graduate Data Nitro (formerly known as IronSpread) has a simple proposition: it enables you to to use the popular programming language Python in Microsoft Excel. The plugin is free for individual non-commercial and enterprises will pay for the privilege. So far it’s only available for the Excel 2007 and 2010 for Windows. The company has no plans to support OSX. → Read More
Popular wisdom has it that tablets are great for consuming content but aren’t that useful for creating it. Don’t tell that to Josh Leong, though. His Y Combinator-backed startup, Grid, is based around the idea that a tablet should be a great place for spreadsheets. Indeed, as Leong told me earlier this week, his idea is to reinvent the spreadsheet around touch, all the tools available in mobile… → Read More
This could be eminently useful. It’s an Excel spreadsheet for Black Friday deals put together by DealsVista. On the left you’ve got the store, then it’s category, then item. MAGIC. → Read More
I couldn’t sleep last night. I was tossing and turning all night, trying to remember if the web-based version of Excel for Office 2010 supported the kind of powerful macro-creation needed to build a roaring fire and a rotating, 3D vector heart using only the spreadsheet cells and horrible, horrible techno. Friends, I don’t know. If the Excel demo scene, whose members number in the high… → Read More
Just as children love hunting for Easter eggs, we love finding virtual Easter eggs in software and Web apps—those intentional hidden messages, features or jokes built into the software that users in the know may stumble upon at some point during their experience with the application. We’ve compiled a list of some of our favorite software Easter eggs of all-time (in no given order) in light of… → Read More
Oh happy day! Helio officially released Mail for MS Exchange last night into beta, so all the business-user-haters can quit their griping. All Ocean owners with an All-in account will be privy to the beta for the next 60 days. You’ll be able to sync your Contacts, Calendar and E-mail from the MS Exchange Server OTA. At the end of the beta period, the final release of Mail for MS Exchange will… → Read More
It remains to be seen whether or not business users will be breaking their crackberry addictions when the iPhone launches next week, but a couple of features could sway you at the last minute. I know a few of you have asked us to cease and desist all coverage of the iPhone from here on out, but hey, there’s nothing else worth telling you about. The iPhone will ship with the standard OS X VPN… → Read More
Don’t know precisely how much money you’ve blown through this holiday season? Well here’s a free holiday spending calculator to get you back on track or make you feel more worthless than I did before when I called you a buncha fatties. This gift from software developer Business Objects uses its Crystal Xcelsius app to let you figure out all your holiday expenses simply by… → Read More
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