Monday, October 12, 2009

Google Squared Updates: Smart Spreadsheets Get Smarter

When Google Squared launched back in June, it was very clear that it was absolutely a product of Labs: promising, but a bit rough around the edges.

However they are not quite ready to seize off the La
bs training wheels just yet, Google’s “smart spreadsheet” product got lots of needed improvements in recent times.

Since Google Squared all about understands structured data, one of the most excellent updates in Google Squared is better quality data.


Google upped the ante there in two ways. Initially, when the Square is first being built, an attempt is made to toss out attributes as well as rows without adequate good facts to support them. Secondly, they built several self-learning mechanisms into the code so that Squared in fact learns from user edits and corrections over time.

You can also just store more data in a Square — it is up to 120 facts per Square from a mere 30. At present you can also export your data to Google spreadsheet, where other transformations as well as visualizations can be done with the information. Or else, export to a standard CSV file also edit the data in a desktop or other spreadsheet ap
plication of your choice.



Finally, Google added colum
n sort to the mix so that you can reschedule attributes and line up your desired comparisons more simply. Squared will even convert units in the background to make sure that attribute comparisons take place properly.

It is still not quite a game-changer, but these are some steps towards making use of the enormous amounts of structured data that are out there on the web is venerable. And if they keep toting up improvements like these, Squared could shortly become extremely useful to researchers, writers as well as infovores alike.


Have you ever used Google Squared? If you’ve had a possibility to try it together before and after the new updates, so what may be your thoughts on these changes?

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