CollateBox Blog

Walk-through the spreadsheet evolution!

Human evolution has taken giant leaps, and to a large extent we are thankful to technology. We owe a lot to it, don’t we? In simple words, technology has made life easy. Meanwhile, it has developed irreverence and impiety within us.

The jargon “Respect your competitors” has a profound value to it, and what we would like to add to it is “Appreciate their work and contributions in the past & present”.

Let me walk you through a journey of our ancestors.

The Spreadsheet Evolution!

The word "spreadsheet" came from "spread" in its sense of a newspaper or magazine item that covers two facing pages, extending across the center fold and treating the two pages as one large one. The compound word "spread-sheet" came to mean the format used to present book-keeping ledgers.

It all started like this:

VisiCalc

Brainchild of Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston. Developed for Apple II in 1979 and later for IBM PC in 1981. In initial two years it turned the tables around for
Apple from being a hobbyist's toy to a useful tool for business. Apple owes a lot to them.

VisiCalc was the first spreadsheet that combined all essential features of modern spreadsheet applications, such as WYSIWYG interactive user interface, automatic recalculation, status and formula lines, range copying with relative and absolute references, formula building by selecting referenced cells. 

 

Lotus 1-2-3

This killer application was by Lotus Software (which is a part of IBM now). Lotus 1-2-3 drove sales of the PC due to the improvements in speed and graphics compared to VisiCalc on the Apple II.

 

Released in 1983, it displaced VisiCalc the very same year, and for a number of years was the leading spreadsheet for DOS. 

 

Multiplan

Microsoft came up with Multiplan in 1982, as a competitor to VisiCalc. Despite the release of Microsoft Chart, graphics companion software, Multiplan continued to be outsold by Lotus 1-2-3.

 

 

AppleWorks

In the meanwhile Apple worked hard for getting its market share, AppleWorks was one of the first integrated office suite for personal computers, featuring a word processor, spreadsheet, and database merged into a single program. It was written by Rupert Lissner and released in 1984.

 

 

Microsoft Excel

Later, Microsoft developed Excel on the Macintosh platform for several years, and then ported it to Windows 2.0. The Windows 3.x platforms of the early 1990s made it possible for Excel to take market share from Lotus.

 

 

Web based spreadsheets

Thanks to web technologies like Ajax circa 2005, a new generation of online spreadsheets has emerged.  Some even have strong multi-user collaboration features and / or offer real time updates.

Some legendary players in this list

• Google Docs
• Office Web Apps
• Zoho Office Suite

And, CollateBox is very proud to join the league.

 

Respect and honor to all who have contributed in spreadsheet evolution!!

 

Disclaimer: Data collated from Wikipedia. You can also add information (as a comment) about the firms whose mention has not been done on the post. 

 

-Athar

 

Related articles

Night is darkest before the dawn and I promise the dawn is coming!

Good and going forward...

Could Microsoft Office's enterprise dominance be challenged?

Lotus 1-2-3, Three Decades On

The night is darkest before the dawn and I promise the dawn is coming!

I must say the entire world is not so delighted with the way tools such as MS Excel or Google Docs function.

This isn’t something which we are shouting. There is a whole community of users which is hit by this storm. Today, let’s take you through one such small community, which is on Twitter.

Let me share some of the tweets: 

*This number is increasing each day

 

It’s not just about Google Docs there are a series of tweets about MS Excel. Have a look,

 

Some have issues with data validation.

 

This one’s a major underlying pain for many, at least small businesses.

 

There are some, who really ain’t that happy with both Excel and Google Docs,

*We can seriously understand your pain on this one

Maaaaaaaaan!! This one might just blow you away & yes completely.

Barclays excel spreadsheet error was a costly affair. Not just for Lehman brothers, but, it did have a major impact on the recession. Click here to read more 

Well, CollateBox can turn tables around for most of you. With CollateBox, you won’t have issues like making graphs, having multiple windows, data validation etc.

I must say this, though we aren’t feature rich as MS Excel, Google Docs (sooner or later we’ll be there :-)) but we can solve your collation, sharing & collaboration needs way better than others.

Here, I say it again.

Night is darkest before the dawn and I promise the dawn is coming!

 

-Athar

(On behalf  of Harvey Dent, DA, Gotham City)

 

 

Related articles

Sharing crumbs of data easier than sharing crumbs of bread!!!

Good and going forward...

Sharing crumbs of data easier than sharing crumbs of bread!!!

Here’s the solution, its CollateBox!

For what?

Have you ever tried sharing portion of data with team members? Let me clear things.

I have a sheet with 100 records, gotta share first 40 records with a team member sitting in Bristol, next 30 records with cute Asian lady, another 20 records with a workaholic team member from SF & the last set of 10 with my newly recruited sales guy at New York.

How do I do it??

MS Ecxel? Naaaaaaa.  Can some1 decide on one of the tools from the big list (Share-a-Point, SkyAdrive)?  And, yeah Cost is also a criteria, in fact a big one.

Gooble Doxx? I am sure they are still defining their own rules for Collaboration.
BTW, is there a way where I can hide data from Mr. Workaholic given that he has access to edit? No I guess.
Darn, what do I do if Mr. New Recruit doesn’t have a GeMail id??
No wonder some call them evil.

Simplest solution is http://www.collatebox.com/

Here’s how CollateBox works,

I am the owner of the list of 100 records, I’ll apply filters & create separate views n save them for my “Fantastic 4”.

100 records of ALL DATA, “Bristol View” of 40 records, “Cute Asian View” of 30 records, “Workaholic SF View” of 20 records, “New Recruit NY View” of 10 records by applying a filter.

Now, it’s simple. Just share each view with each one separately (not necessarily a GeMail id).

I get to sit with my coffee & enjoy looking at my data getting collated, organized n managed with authority.
And yeah, it’s a validated one! 

 

-Athar

Good and going forward…

Let me explain the “Good” first – Mayan Apocalypse is long gone. We made it. Wishing all our customers and friends a rewarding 2013.

I can assure you that figuring whether the world is going to survive was simple (thanks NASA); but sorting the “Going Forward” wasn’t that easy for us. WONDERING WHY? Here are a few key reasons that you all ought to be aware off.  

a) We have gathered a wonderful, patient and global user base. These users softly share their pain and teach us how we should build our product. Very few products in the world get that fortunate so early and we have decided to make sure we do whatever it takes to make their business & life of working with typical lists of data more comfortable. But this means longer survival and more commitment from a fund perspective. Finding the right partner for funding isn’t easy these days. It takes months of hunting, dating and discussions. How are we going to survive till then? Via a small monthly recurring service fee …? 

b) Yes, you heard it right. We are introducing a small monthly subscription fee with 5 different plans to suit your needs and have also decided to support only active accounts. Which means, if your account is not active or not in use on a regular basis with a few shares – your account is going get deleted. Click to learn more about the pricing plans here: http://www.collatebox.com/web/pricing.html

c) Like always, we have decided to give a permanent free life for all shared user accounts. Your request will not go unheard in CollateBox. When you share a view of your data list with someone (either with a Gmail, Hotmail or some other business email id) – the shared user gets a FREE account of CollateBox. The login credentials are emailed to the shared user who can enjoy working on the shared data and further share it with other team members too. But once the shared user loads own data, the use will have to choose one of the paid plans. Not until then. The shared user can always delete their own lists of data and continue to access the shared files without paying anything to CB! 

d) Instant visualizations just got better! Earlier you could see ready graphs and charts in active accounts only. But now it is made available as part of the CB action panel. See below and enjoy viewing instant analytics on your data. 

e) CB Forum is turning out to be our official support channel. Which means, all new features, tips and tricks are mostly going to be on the forum. Help and your support queries will find priority from us if they originate in the Forum. So make sure you save this URL (http://forum.collatebox.com) in your favorites list.  

f) We now offer a high level of security to our users who trust us with their valuable business data. All personal information and data are hosted on a 100 percent uptime guaranteed, load balanced SAS 70, Type II data center and is accessible over a 128-bit encrypted SSL connection. All your data is stored in state-of-the-art cloud infrastructure of Microsoft Azure and backed up daily to prevent any loss of data.  We have also applied for TRUSTe's online privacy seals & services to ensure web privacy, online safety and help build online trust for customers.

Going forward we will need all your support and feedback. Great to have you all with us. 

Look forward to hear more from you.

Tadaa...

 

- Sunny

Founder, CollateBox

 

How to work without limiting your data using CollateBox?

If Google Docs 400,000 cell limit and Sky Drive 5Mb open excel is limiting you, welcome aboard CollateBox – we do this differently. Here are a few questions and answers to help you navigate quickly.

Question 1: Does CollateBox have an import limitation when it comes to number of records of data? 

Answer: We have not set limitations yet, but we recommend doing this differently. To start with; please copy/paste not more than 10,000 records at one go and create a new data list. Once your list of data shows up in CollateBox, we recommend you to append the remaining data via bulk copy/paste. Visit the CollateBox Forum to learn more. 

Question 2: Why is it that CollateBox only shows 500 records in the working list?

Answer: Most of us don’t work with more than 500 records at any given time. CB does not have a limitation of 500 records though. You can load more than 10,000 records in a list, but we have restricted the display capacity to 500 for faster performance. If you want to see the next 500 just click on Page 2 at the footer of the list and so on.

If you take any action (set a filter on a date range or column type or set a custom search), your complete data is filtered according to the criteria. To make this more clear: when you download a view of your data list from CollateBox with more than 500 records - you will see the entire data exported out, even when the screen display shows only 500.

Question 3: What is the maximum limit of columns that CollateBox supports in a list?

Answer: Maximum number of columns that you can bring inside CollateBox is 50. When you copy/paste your table of data inside CollateBox any column beyond 50 may get imported initially but will be removed later as you continue working with your data list.

Question 4: What is the maximum length of a long text in a cell?

Answer: There is no limit to the length of a long text in a cell. You can add unlimited text in a cell.

Question 5: What is the maximum length of a column name in CollateBox?

Answer: Even though there is no limit to the number of characters that you can enter in a cell, CollateBox would like you to limit 50 characters for column names.

Question 6: How many files can you attach in a single row in CollateBox?

CollateBox allows you attach a file of maximum 10 Mb in size to a single. However, you have a limit of attaching only 4 files to a single row (i.e., 4*10 = 40 Mb). Your capacity to attach files are completely left to your billing plan. To know more, please see the CollateBox Pricing Plans.

Question 7: What are the different file-formats supported while attaching files in CollateBox?

Answer: You can attach files, images and comments for individual records at a row level. The file types that we support are: .txt, .doc, .docx, .pdf, .xls, .xlsx, .ppt, .pptx, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .gif, .tiff

Question 8: What other data sources does CollateBox currently support besides Microsoft Excel and Google spreadsheets?

Answer: Currently we only support these, but in the process of adding more options. Remember, your data lists can be exported from popular web applications such as Highrise, LinkedIn, Basecamp or even Facebook in spreadsheet formats and added inside CollateBox.  

 

We’ll add more questions around data limits to this blog post. Until then, take care.

- Santa

 

Related articles

Collecting data online got cleaner

Collecting data online got cleaner

Keeping our data clean is one big thing, but collecting cleaner data is even BIGGER. Think about all the ways we collect data everyday and trying to keep it clean is really messy. Why…?

Imagine your website contact form data is without spam, getting your next online survey filled with accurate choices or maybe registering guests online for your next event comes with valid date, time, currency, country formats. Woooh – can we do these without writing code or developing a complex Online Form…?

Discovering this facet of data collection has been interesting learning for us in CollateBox and the outcome - Brand new way of collecting data online using CollateBox Online Forms.

Hopefully something you will enjoy using too. See the screenshot below:

Here are a few key highlights:

• No more spending time on creating Forms, just click and generate.
• Field validations get auto generated, date means a date in any format to us.
• Auto dropdown get created based on existing data value, you can populate too.
• Public URL lets you collect data from customers, partners via a single click.
• Embedding online forms helps you to white-label & collect data from your site.

And much more…

So, once you are done collecting a few records - don’t forget, we offer a better way to organize, share and act on these growing data list too :-)

 

Best,

Santa

Terms of use: The Online Forms are made available FREE for all active CB account holders only.  

How a list of data or spreadsheet in CollateBox is different from DropBox?

This topic has been picking our attention. Hence this short post. Please feel free to add your comments and ask for more. 

Dropbox is an online application that lets you store and sync your photos, docs, spreadsheets and videos from anywhere using any device (computers, phones and your Dropbox website). It is not a collaboration tool that lets you automatically organize, work or share data for others. You can share files and folders with specific users in Drop Box, but if more than one user opens the file it will create conflicted copies.

CollateBox on the other hand lets you bring your growing tables of data or spreadsheets online and share parts of it with others users. You can share partial information from a spreadsheet that pertains to a specific user or a group and work on it simultaneously. CollateBox automatically keeps your master data list updated on a real time basis without having to cut and paste from multiple spreadsheets and also lets you organize and act on this data in many different ways.

And ooh... we also allow attaching, files, documents and images on every record of your box of data.

 

Spreadsheet in CollateBox is different from Dropbox

To keep this simple: Drop Box allows you to store and keep your spreadsheets in sync as files whereas, CollateBox lets you organize, share and act on columns, rows and cells of your lists of data along with files and images with others. 

 

Regards,

Santa

NOTE: The views expressed above are purely personal and for informational purposes only. COLLATEBOX INC. MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY. The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

Put your Spreadsheet... on steroids

 

A Quick Tour of CollateBox

How CollateBox can save money for your business?

You are in business! You are thinking to save money! Anything that can save a few cents is always preferable when pockets are tight. Sell more, spend less is always awesome.

Save money using CollateBox

Now, when you are thinking about saving money there are multiple areas in your business where you can do such adjustments. Let’s start with marketing, shall we?

How much time do you spend everyday cleaning up prospect details, sales updates, or customer database? Nothing less than 2 hours a day? Surprisingly many companies don’t understand the necessity to clean up this data as they go along. As a result, they are frequently sending sales materials to companies, which have gone out of business or continuously searching for the latest spreadsheet for updated information. In effect losing more money!

The answer to addressing this problem is to keep your data clean and always updated. Let’s say, you have a list of prospects that you are collecting from your lead generation team. There are inconsistencies in the data formats and the data needs to be cleaned up. Also, once your data is cleaned up, it needs to be regularly updated with latest information and all your sales agents kept informed. Now, there are tools available which can help you keep your data clean but there is NO solution to keep them regularly updated while you are working - automatically.

This is why we built CollateBox for your marketing department. CollateBox automatically figures out the structure of the data and creates valid data types with proper validation to keep your data clean – the moment you bring your marketing or prospect list inside CB. You are at liberty to  create multiple views of your tables of data and allocate to specific team members; they can’t even change the master column structure without your permission. Other users can just keep adding new info, making status changes and updating their views on the go and CollateBox automatically updates your master list saving you chunks of cleaning & organizing efforts every day.

And, as you keep saving time, you keep saving money!

If you are facing a similar problem and want to save money and time from cleaning your marketing data while working – Get a CollateBox account and organize your spreadsheet data efficiently.

 

Stay well,

Santa

 

Preview and Introduction to CollateBox

The time has come. Today we formally begin to open CollateBox!

The name is CollateBox In most cases the name of the business holds very little significance to the problem that your product is solving. Yet, we thought of keeping some resemblance with our goals, hence CollateBox. Gathering and organizing data from multiple users in the easiest possible way is how it all started…

The schedule Over the next few weeks we’ll be inviting users, revealing screenshots, descriptions, pricing, used cases, videos, design decisions, and more. Then we’ll launch. We’ve been using CollateBox internally for the past couple of months and excited to let you use it too. It does little today – but saves you from spending lots of your time when it comes to collecting, sharing and organizing your tables of growing data.

So what is CollateBox? The simplest way to organize, share and act on parts of your growing lists of data online without creating and emailing multiple copies. You should be pleasantly surprised with a few other twists that the product offers :-)

 

CollateBox  - Curtain Raiser

Why did we build it? We collaborate on data with lots of people (internally or externally) for different projects. Be it recruitment, marketing campaign, sales projections, SEO keyword tracking, development task, customer complaint management, etc. Keeping track of these growing tables of data using spreadsheets was a nightmare. Scouting mailboxes to find the latest spreadsheet version to act upon was only the beginning. To get more value, we had to do more! Think about collecting validated data from team members or simply the ability to hide a few columns and share data lists with others. Nothing seemed to work when it came to keeping our own records updated when needed. So we decided to build a shared online app where we could copy/paste our own lists of data and share limited views for others to work. Getting CollateBox to gather, share and automatically collate all valid changes back to “all data” view has been a rewarding effort for us, and a great way to save time and money for all those who were locked inside spreadsheets.

 

Job scenarios CollateBox was built to accomplish common tasks, such as:

• Easy way to gather and access your growing tables of data online from anywhere
• Collaborate on data with other members without making different copies
• Sort, filter, group relevant parts of your data as views for others to update
• Build expressions and relationships to derive higher value from data
• Stay updated on activities and changes on your data lists via email and SMS alerts
• Automatically create online form templates for collecting prospects or inventory details
• Easily change columns of data from anywhere so that the entire team stays updated
• Organize large data as different datasets for reports and views for future reference
• Visualize data in maps, graphs and charts online and share views with others
• Export updated views of your data into Excel anytime
• Do more with your data without any significant efforts or learning

Millions of business managers and citizen developers around the world continue living with the most basic challenge of organizing & collaborating on parts of their spreadsheet data with others without copying, saving or emailing multiple sheets. Think about your Delivery List, Prospect list or List of Open Invoices. If you want to organize, act, share and work with parts of such data lists with other team members with lesser efforts and better control, you are left with no choice today. That’s why CollateBox matters.

Stay tuned for more. If you want to be notified when we launch and also get a trial account, please register your email address and sign-up for an account.

 

Best,

Sunny & Ralph
Founders, CollateBox