Google "Gadgets" provide new way to look at data
BEIJING, March 20 (Xinhuanet) -- Search engine giant Google unveiled Gadgets for Spreadsheets in Google Docs on Wednesday, allowing people to create graphical representations of data in spreadsheets and publish them on Web sites.
New nifty features added provide consumers new ways to look at data in their spreadsheets. Google has put up a gallery of specialty gadget to choose from. They include gadgets to display data on a pie chart, map, time chart, funnel chart, Gantt chart, pivot table, and on a heat map if it's geographical data. Users can even create interactive charts like those used by Google Finance and for motion charts.
These visuals can also be pushed out to appear on an iGoogle home page or any other site and will be dynamically updated as changes are made to the spreadsheet.
Google is doing something interesting with its Gadgets platform, making gadgets a data source for spreadsheets as well as a data distribution method for developers.
These new features are reported to be added to their other tools (Word Processor and Presentation) in the future. Jonathan Rochelle, senior product manager for Google Docs spoke about these new features, "If we have a new idea for visualizing data, we can create that as a separate feature that can be pushed out to users of Google Docs' spreadsheet."
