Editgrid Releases new API

By Vivek Puri | August 24th, 2006 at 07:20 pm ET         

Web-based spreadsheets competition is touching new levels with Editgrid.com releasing it new version (Public Beta 10) containing exciting new enhancements including EditGrid API, Editgrid sync, Grid2Calendar, Grid2Map, Search2Grid, Grid Translate and XML Export. Besides these Edigrid already boasts of 500+ functions, Real-time Update, Remote Data Update, Full Keyboard controls, Dataformats, Import/Export, i18n support, API and much more. It seems that Editgrid is all set to dominate the web-based spreadsheet area.

Editgrid sync can schedule backup of users data at a designated time through a downloadable desktop application. EditGrid Sync would also allow users to upload/download spreadsheets right to their Desktops without opening a browser. As of now Editgrid Sync Supports Microsoft Excel and Gnumeric file formats. I downloaded and installed the application, put in the application key, and got quite a few bugs while trying to sync files on my xp machine. But as we know it’s only 0.1 release, so hope things will work better next time

Another interesting enhancement is the Grid2Calendar using which calendar data can be fed from Editgrid spreadsheet into your favorite calendar application supporting ical format. Below is a screenshot of me trying to export a spreadsheet into calendar format xml.

Editgrid also introduced Grid2Map where users can mashup google maps and post it to their blog. Just put in multiple Title, Decription and Addresses into a spreadsheet and Editgrid maps them using Google API. The addon also provides script, which you can use to post maps on to your blog.

Results Plotted onto google map-

Another feature Search2Grid will allow users to search keyword performance in Google, Yahoo and msn. Below is screenshot for the search box in Editgrid addons. The resulting query brought up search results from yahoo and msn but nothing for Google.

Results:

Editgrid now also supports export of spreadsheets in XML format. Previously Editgrid supported export to Microsoft Excel, HTML, CSV, Gnumeric, TeX source.

Another new feature Grid Translate can now help you easily translate and read spreadsheets using the Google Translate’s homepage translation function. Off course the translation will be as good as Google Translate can throw out, but definitely will be useful.

Overall lots of great new enhancements, but Editgrid definately need to work on making all them sync better. As part of their future plans Editgrid plans to Enterprise version with Team support, Live Data feeds, Support more browsers.

Links:
Editgrid.com home page
Editgrid Labs
Editgrid Blog
Editgrid Forum
Editgrid change log