Some of us aren't good with numbers. The whole addition, subtraction, division, it's just not our forte.
Sure Windows and Macs have built in calculators but we're web people so we need something on the web to make us not feel like we're totally mathstupid.
Ecalc to the rescue. It's not just any calculator though.
It's pretty and webified.
They also have a scientific calculator for those who are past just trying to add up this months shopping list with the rent, which is as far as some of us go.
All kidding aside, scientific calculators are expensive...so it's pretty cool to have this tool available online.
They also have a rundown of all types of calculators if you're really into that.
So go be a mathematical genius...we're counting on you.
Calq is a free, lightweight, shortcut-key accessible calculator for both Mac OS X 10.4+ and Windows 2000/XP. The idea is to give you quick access to math functions without launching another program just to do simple calculations.
Calq can run in your Mac menubar or Windows tray, but you can just have the program run in the background with no icons. You can select a hotkey to launch the calculator, and when you press that hotkey, the Calq window displays for you to enter your calculations.
The program has a few customizable options besides the hotkey combination like screen location of the calculator window, fade effect, and transparency.
Ever find yourself sitting in front of a computer that's been locked down by an overzealous IT administrator who won't let you install any software or even open Internet Explorer or Firefox? If that PC is running Windows XP, there's a good chance you can still visit Download Squad (or other sites if that sort of thing appeals to you).
All you have to do is launch a Windows application like Calculator, and then click the Help button. Under Help, click "Help Topics," which will bring up a help window. Next, all you have to do is right click on the title bar and select "Jump To URL." Now you can type in any web address you like, but make sure to include "http://" at the beginning. Basically what you're looking at is Internet Explorer 6 inside a help window, but this version of the program isn't quite as smart as IE6. It won't automatically add the http:// for you. And of course, there's no bookmarking feature.
Time is money. And every time you have to sit down with your boss, coworkers, and some random consultant thinking what a big waste of time this meeting is, you could also argue that it's a waste of money.
Meeting Miser helps you figure out just how much money. The little web app works by pulling in average salaries for various job types and determining what their time is worth. So next time you sit down at a meeting, just open your laptop and pop in the job titles of all the attendees. Click the start button and watch the dollars rack up.
Somehow we doubt you'll actually show the total to your boss as proof that you should be allowed to skip the next meeting. But at least you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that your boring meeting has been scientifically shown to be a complete and utter waste.
Could this online office suite steal people away from the popular Google and Zoho? It seems far from likely that Peepel will ever take market share away from the online office application space. However, they might look a little amateur, but a lot of development work has gong under the Peepel hood, showing how serious people are indeed trying to get into this space.
Peepel has just announced their beta release for their online office suite of products that are currently not running head to head with Google, Zoho and Thinkfree. Peepel's suite includes a spreadsheet, calculator, word processor, help system, and a file manager. The Peepel workspace manager is a feature that saves the desktop as you have left it, and will open with everything where you were when you login the next time. A Task manager lives on the screen and shows everything that is open and active. In Peepel, users can have many different applications and files open at once, all overlapping in resizable windows. The big claim to fame by Peepel is the claim that they are the only competitor offering a true multiple window system in an online desktop, and not just a bunch of stacked popups. Some neat features, but nothing out of the ordinary that is going to make users want to switch.
Aside from the fact that there is currently no importing or sharing files, as well as limited storage sizes, Peepel does have a very welcome offline work mode. It's not up to standards with their competition, but if they are serious about success, they do have potential to grab a tiny share of the market space. We will hold off on storing any major files here yet, but our radar will be following Peepel's further development.
What does the 5 in Calc5 stand for? I have no idea. Rest assured, though, that this slick Ajax calculator does support most numbers, including those greater than five. At first blush there's not a lot to set Calc5 apart from the crowd. It works as advertised. But then you get into the advanced math and graphing functions, and that's where Calc5 really stands out. While it's distinctly lacking in documentation, the built-in samples will get you started. You can use unlimited variables, you can do derivations, you can find derivatives, and more, but most impressively you can make fast, attractive graphs, both 2D and 3D. The 2D graphs are very cool--smooth lines, and a Google Maps-like interface that lets you pan and zoom with the mouse. The 3D graphs aren't quite as cool--they lack the pan and zoom features--but still. 3D graphs will always be cool. The site automatically saves your previous calculations (via cookies), which is handy, but there's no built-in permalink system for sending calculations or graphs to your friends and colleagues. I can only assume this functionality is coming.
There are a couple undocumented features (well the whole app is undocumented, so take that how you will) I discovered that you might find useful, though:
Pressing Ctrl+Enter is equivalent to clicking the "OK" button. Very handy.
You can link to an equation by putting it after a pound sign following the URL. So if you wanted to help your friend solve, say, 2+2, you could point them to calc5.com/#2+2. Your friend will still have to click on the "OK" button (I hope this changes soon), but it works. First person to send me a Calc5 link for the Valenzetti Equation gets a free trip on Oceanic Airlines.
Calc5 is fairly powerful, especially with those graphing features, but it's clearly still very beta. Once they get some real documentation in there and some more convenience features, it could become indispensable. For now I'll probably stick to Google Calculator for the easy stuff, and Instacalc for the more complex stuff--unless I need to do some advanced graphing.
Instacalc just blows my mind. It's such a simple idea, brilliantly executed: It's sort of like a Web 2.0 mini-Excel, allowing you to quickly create a calculator for anything--body mass, loan repayment, YouTube valuation--with simple or complex calculations, and then share them with your friends, colleagues, or the world. It knows lots of mathematical operations and functions, understands things like "3 billion" or "8 kbps," and even does some basic programming-like operations.
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.
Chris Pirillo points us to a freely downloadable calculator from Microsoft that is head and shoulders beyond the default Windows calculator in terms of features. Of course, as with most downloads from Microsoft these days, this one requires Windows Genuine Advantage certification. If that makes you nervous, steer clear, but if you're looking for a new calculator application that gives you conversions including currency exchange conversions (it can even download exchange rates), give this one a try.
Some of us aren't good with numbers. The whole addition, subtraction, division, it's just not our forte. 
Calq
