Here’s an online spreadsheet application in the vein of Writely (recently acquired by Google). It’s called Num Sum and it’s interesting offline feature I find fascinating. I invite readers to do an open review and post their findings in the comments. If the product looks good to the majority of users I’ll repost this on Monday.
Link to the website here.
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Ok, this is what I see happening, which should make Microsoft VERY nervous
What happens, let’s say., if Google buys Linspire and also a company such as num sum and they develop linspire so that it is bootable to a USB thumb drive?
You will be able to walk up to any computer, put your thumb drive in and bring up YOUR personalized settings. With the Advent of online Google storage of files through Gdrive, online office applications from Google of Word processing, Spreadsheets, Google Page Creator for HTML editing, Google Base database, etc the majority of average customer needs will be met.
And if google gives the OS away for free, you will have a situation where all the average person willl need will be Case, Motherboard, CPU and Ram. Mouse, Keyboard and Monitor.
Walmart will sell them for $99
Computer shops like mine will become VCR repair shops – and how many of them are there left?
John, missed the email line
What would happen if Google buys this company? They would then have the complete office suite. Spread sheet, Word Processing, Database, HTML Editor
And they have Gdrive File Storage
Then they buy out Linspire and port it to a bootableUSB thumb drive and Give the OS away for free.
You will be able to walk up to any computer, put your thumb drive in and bring up your own settings and go online and get your apps and data.
Walmart will sell boxes for $99
And computer repair shops like mine will be out of business
Al Cole,
Speaking as a certified Linux junkie, I would ask you to refrain from mentioning the Linspire distribution. Most Linux junkies like myself view Linspire with the same warm enthusiasm as a colon polyp (it isn’t the distro it’s the actions of the developer.) Humor aside it isn’t out of reason for Google to do what you said, Damn Small Linux or Gumstick would do it much better. And you wouldn’t have to go out of business, you’d just become a thumb drive retailer (you could get a kiosk in a mall.)
Jason, my wife is the resident Linux junkie [Yellow Dog for PowerPC]; but, after our latest giggle, we both must say how much we enjoy your sense of humor.
Used it. Reminds me of a GUI Visi-Calc. Little slow but like the possibilies.
And in the blink of an eye, Excell is obsolete. 😛
ok but needs some help with the UI. With some work this can be very good. Since it’s free it’s for what it’s worth
Yo, Jason
I suggested Linspire for it’s relative ease of installation and the CNR program installation.
Most of my customers – the first words out of their mouth is ” I’m computer illeterate” – it is Newbie Central
We have no malls, just 3 computer stores, a radio shack. a kmart and a super walmart in a town of 3000 (yes, 3000) people
As to Numsum, the basis of this discussion, it is an ok program, further developed than jotspot, but I personally like irows at http://www.irows.com better
Do a google search for online spreadsheets and I get 25 Million hits
I gotta believe google is looking at some of them
PS Even colon polyps need friends – or a quick cash infusion !!!
I’d like a real UI, someone tell Google to make one.
Eideard,
Thanks, like your site by the way. Haven’t messed with yellow dog since the ibook died last year. (OSX lives on on one of my PCs) I currently use SuSE. Damn Small, Kororaa, and Phlak. Phlak was the first distro I ever used.
NumLock,
It just wouldn’t be Google if it didn’t look like crap. They really need to hire some graphic design people. They also need to hire people who can encode video, half the stuff on google video looks worse than the same files off the source web sites. Why would you have to downgrade the video??? I can’t think of a good reason other than Google just screwed it up.
I can’t rely on anything that is online only, what happens when the Internet goes down (or when traveling and there are no hotspots)
Boss “why are you not working”
Me “The Internet is down”
Boss “oh OK… carry on then”
just does not seem likely.
as far as i am concerned products like writely do not replace Word, they simply make it easy to collaborate online, with many people, and it works when traveling (w/o a laptop) to edit documents in web cafes that do not have word installed.But it is no replacement for word on MY computers… at least not yet, not until they make an offline version that I can install.
If MS makes an online version that is available for free to everyone, then they could stop (or at least severely hamper) this trend on online web apps.
I think these on-line applications like numsum and Writely are the wave of the future.
The eventual victor will be whoever offers a suite of three our four key applications.
The KEY, though, will have to be simplicty. (for me, anyway). They ABSOLUTELY must avoid feature-bloat.
I have that already in MS Office. I’m very eager to dump MS Office.
I just finished looking at Num Sum.
Best I can tell, many of those people don’t understand their spreadsheets are public! (which is the default. private has to be opted-in)
Like this one, for instance:
http://numsum.com/spreadsheet/show/7571
GregAllen – i just went to that spreadsheet. After about 15 seconds, I had a dialog box come up, saying that a script on the page was causing Firefox to run slowly, and if continued, could cause the system to ecome unresponsive. Not good
They seem like good ideas, but does everyone really want to have to be connected to the internet to do their work? This seems fixing a problem that isn’t broken.
I take my notebook computer and write using Word and Final Draft in many locations- coffeeshops, parks, etc. Some have WiFi and I use it. Others don’t or make you pay up to $10 for a day pass. If I used Writley I’d have to spend extra money for connectivity everywhere, eventually enough extra money that I could have bought an officesuite anyway. I can wait to get my mail or surf dvorak.com/blog, but when I have a deadline don’t impede me. Just give me the coffee and the program.
If we had some kind of region-wide wireless this might be okay, but what happens when the connection is down. We even lose our wired DSL in the office here occasionally. If I can’t surf dvorak.com/blog because the DSL is down I might as well work… and I can simply run Word and get to work.