You’ve probably seen the announcement about Google Spreadsheet. It’s to be a Web application that makes it easy for up to 10 people to collaborate on a spreadsheet. It will be able to handle several hundred formulas, but not macros, making it ideal for the low-end spreadsheet user.
According to Jonathan Rochelle, the product manager of the new application, Google is focusing on the sharing aspect. It sounds like a great idea for the families, small businesses and workgroups who use spreadsheets to categorize and organize information -- like, soccer coaches juggling team lists and people planning family reunions the New York Times article about the announcement suggests.
Probably not coincidentally, there’s a thread on Slashdot about the pandemic of errors in spreadsheets caused by bad logic, unsophisticated users and sloppy review – not to mention the fact that a spreadsheet shouldn’t be a substitute for financial software. There’s even a link to an organization that tracks spreadsheet errors. European Spreadsheet Risks Interest Group (EuSpRIG) http://www.eusprig.org/ is an “interest group of academia and industry promoting research regarding the extent and nature of spreadsheet risks, methods of prevention and detection of errors and methods of limiting damage.†EuSpRIG keeps a list of spreadsheet errors reported in the press. One of the odd things about that list of cautionary tales is that most of them seem to be from the public sector.
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