Roughly the TRUTH

Google opens up a trove of data for users to harness and build into their own websites…

The Basic Idea:
Allow users to create and publish spreadsheets with dynamically updating data online to their own websites. The method used to cull the data is quite easy -a little too easy if you have a desire to publish complex data results- and has the potential to make any Joe Shmoe an instant RSS expert (Not sure about this, but typically, RSS feeds allow for very little customization by the end user; this is unlike Google’s new dynamic cell formulas).
Here are the formulas users will apply in Google Spreadsheets:

GoogleLookup function
Syntax: =GoogleLookup(”entity”, “attribute”)

GoogleFinance function
Syntax: =GoogleFinance(”symbol”, “attribute”)

In The Past:
Only VB programmers and businesses wealthy enough to subscribe to Bloomberg and Reuters data services have been able to harness the vast amounts of dynamic data available over the internet. Today, they still are pretty much the only ones who can do this - Although, Google Spreadsheets has integrated these very interesting functions which at least takes a step in that direction.

The following is a live example embedded into this post:
(This was super easy)

Publishing your own dynamic spreadsheet:

1) If you haven’t already, sign up for a Google account. Play around with the above formulas until you’re happy with what the spreadsheet looks like (you’ll see the data dynamically populate the cell once you enter a “proper” attribute, entity and/or symbol - this wan’t so easy for me while messing with different LookUp function).

2) Click the “Publish” tab on the top right. Change the “Automatically update every 5 minutes?” option to YES. Now click on the “Re-Publish” button to save your settings.

3) Look further down in this section and click on “More publishing options”

4) For “File format” choose: HTML to embed in a webpage - adjust the other settings as desired.

5) Now, simply Generate URL and copy the HTML into your webpage (note: WordPress users should go into their options and revert from the RTF editor to avoid any problems).

Get examples & read more about these functions here:

You can finally become that walking database you’ve always aspired to be with Google Short Message Service (SMS) in your pocket…

This slick little service has gotten me out of a pinch on numerous occasions. Just last night I was able to send a text message to GOOGL (46645) - leave off the ‘E’ - to get the address for a local bar. The response time was less than 30 seconds (this has been a typical wait time in my experience). Then, all I had to do was forward it on to my friends who were all meeting there, that’s it! And this is just the tip of the iceberg. Here are some other things Google says you can do with this very cool service:

“get phone listings, weather conditions, question answering, movie showtimes, sports scores, and more.

Requirements: A text messaging plan from your mobile service provider; any old mobile phone should work.

Here’s the comprehensive list of cool things you can do:

There’s also a useful ‘help’/'tips’ message you can receive from Google that includes brief instructions on the various ways to use the service. Due to inbox limits on most phones, this instruction message may get deleted. You can prevent this by using the lock feature on your phone…if not, you can always send a text with the word ‘help’ or ‘tips’ to get another copy.

Some Final Thoughts:
As far as I can tell, there are no restrictions on your service carrier, type of phone or location within the lower 48 states. If there’s more data than will fit in a single message, you’ll recieve multiple text messages that are numbered accordingly.

One of the nicest things about this service is the minimal demand it puts on the hardware (cell phone) you’re carrying around. Take the Google SMS service for a spin at their website to get a feel for how it works with their very real demo. So shelve that expensive data plan and ramp up your monthly text message limit.

NOTE: This service has been available for awhile now, but it’s so useful that I felt it deserved this entry.