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Instacalc: Quick, powerful, shareable calculator
Unlike a full-fledged spreadsheet, Instacalc just has rows, and in each row you can enter a number or bit of math, and the result will be shown at the end of the row as you type. You can refer to values from other rows by their row number (e.g. 5 + R1), or you can give a row a name by putting "rowname =" before it and then refer to it by name (5 + rowname). You can click on the result at the end of a row to hide the row and show only the result, and you can put "//" before a row to make it into a comment, i.e. a text label that doesn't do anything but give information to whoever's using your Instacalc. If you've ever done any programming, all of this is probably sounding pretty familiar, but even if you haven't Instacalc is easy to use. On top of all the various operations, you can also quickly create bar, pie, and line charts, like this country population chart.
But wait, it gets better. Like any good Web 2.0 service, Instacalc lets you embed your calculator in any web page with a snippet of HTML.
Obviously, I'm very impressed by Instacalc and am shuffling it straight into my bookmarks. Head over there and check out some of the sample calculators to quickly get an idea of what it's capable of. Once you've played around a bit, post links to your Instacalcs in the comments.
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They key to getting good at Graveyard Shift is learning to use ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Shunnabunich said 6:58PM on 11-02-2006
You guys should look at Soulver, too. It's an offline app, and it doesn't do stuff like charts, but the stuff you can type in there and stull get results (AS you type) is phenomenal.
http://www.acqualia.com/soulver/
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zoro25 said 7:03PM on 11-02-2006
perfect thanks alot for the heads up on this.
z
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Siya Abraham said 7:04PM on 11-02-2006
I experimented with instacalc and was thrilled to see how I could edit in real time. I have a way of second guessing myself when I enter numbers, and now I don't have to do it over just to be sure. I can check as I go along. This is great!
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Kalid said 12:47AM on 11-04-2006
Hi Jordan, thanks for the glowing review! This article has the most comprehensive discussion of features I've found, and you definitely nailed the key benefits of the tool. If I didn't know better, I'd say you wrote the InstaCalc tour [and have given me a few ideas of what to highlight there] :)
I'm very excited to see where this will lead. As you mention, it's easy to share and discuss thoughts. I hope this leads to increased community participation on blogs and articles, as readers can question assumptions and post thoughts on new results.
There's always room to improve, so please feel free to send feedback to kalid (AT) instacalc (DOT) com. Thanks again for the great review!
-Kalid
PS. As an example, a reader created a chart of the most common RDF namespaces, here: http://www.geospatialsemanticweb.com/2006/11/03/see-25-most-common-rdf-namespaces-in-instacalc
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