Future of Spreadsheet

Google Spreadsheet is just another rubbish web application only limited works can be done comparing with rich client applications in perspective of Microsoft (Zdnet podcast interview with MS's LeBond). But it reminds me of an old revolution of VisiCalc . Picture above still shows how VisiCalc's original design of spreadsheet is still neat and elegant for today(1981 IBM PC edition). It was really easy. Without it, you need to learn Fortran or Basic to do some calculation. Any ordinary business man can use it right away after 30 minute introduction.

MS Excel is just a rubbish copy product for doing every thing. In 1985 first Excel was released for Mac and Windows version win the battle with Lotus 1-2-3 finally. But it is error prone. Hard to keep track of change and follow streaming of in & out. Even it is not friendly with other MS applications such as Word and Outlook.Pasted or exported chart is often uncontrollable and ugly.

Interestingly, MS Excel is a popular office documenting tool rather than a calculator nowadays. Especially my HR and finance team guys use Excel for every thing. For example, when I request new PC lease, I need to download a XLS format and keep my personal information on it. Print out & sign on it and send it to mailbox. Actually it doesn't do any calculation. It is one of big reason why business people love Excel. Most business people don't have training any programming languate such as C/JAVA or HTML. They learn Excel. In case of Word and Outlook, you don't need special training for this. After training course or self training, every man can create smart document which can automate and normalize input. Output is ugly but enough for office.(Sorry, Jensen but you need to focus on output rather than the Ribbon.)

Can Google spreadsheet be a new hope? It is promising for sharing chart with others. And it's FREE!! but it is just a rubbish test service yet. (Please see introduction by ZDnet)

SO WHAT?
Actually, I'll love if future of spreadsheet can do following things.
For Google or any other guys want to invade in MS office empire, I believe it is very vulnerable point.

1. Copy a value from an internet site and paste on sheet and it will be updated lively/manually. Imagine a stock price widget is living in a cell.
2. Aggregate data from a variety of other sheet and internet document which are reported from your team member. It will be updated by member's publishing.
3. Keep history of changing. Like a Wiki, you can go back to whenever and can create historical comparison chart.
4. Simulate by test input. Like a Blog, draft saving is allowed. It will be separated until publishing.
5. Visual spreadsheet. It has been researched based on visual programming tool such as Prograph. But it is almost forgotten technology now. You can build financial model and understand formula more easily. Because Spreadsheet is easy but error prone. It will be useful to save your chart from audit. Please click for more
6. Visual layout. Like a MS Access. Report designer may help people to control the document output. Of course it should support XML output as well.
7. Export to Blog. HTML table is sucks. I need to paste a part of spreadsheet on my Blog. And it should be alive with controls.

And one small thing...

8. Sort by color. I love to use background/font color of cell to identify rows usually. I'll really appreciate if spreadsheet can see color as attribute.