Today’s winning comment comes from our feature-by-feature comparison of Office Live Workspace and Google Docs. In the post Sarah Perez concluded that “Google Docs, although limited in its capabilities, offers real-time collaboration”, while “Office Live Workspace […] may not have the collaboration features of Google Docs, but the workspaces feature is unique.” As usual when we compare Google with Microsoft office products, the discussion was feisty. Jrome’s comment stood out though: he pointed to a compelling feature in Google Docs called GoogleLookUp. He explains below:
Congratulations Jrome, you’ve won a $30 Amazon voucher – courtesy of our competition sponsors AdaptiveBlue and their Netflix Queue Widget.
UPDATE: Jrome, your email address had an error, so please contact us at tips@readwriteweb.com to claim your prize.
“Hey Sarah, If you want to focus on “everyman” features, why not to highlight the awesome GoogleLookUp function?
Here are the few steps: 1. Create a Google Spreadsheet 2. Tape “bmw” in A2, “mercedes” in A3 and “nissan” in A4 3. Select A2:A4 and, while holdind the Ctrl key, expand your selection until A50. 4. Say “wow” 5. Tape “employees” from B2 to B50. 6. Enter “=googlelookup(A2; B2)” in C2 and expand the formula until C50 7. “wow”, again
Here are some of the types of entities you can access using GoogleLookup, and a few popular attribute names:
Countries and Territories (like “Burkina Faso”): population, capital, largest city, gdp U.S. States (like “Tennessee”): area, governor, nickname, flower Rivers (like “Amazon River”): origin, length Cities and Towns (like “Chicago”): state, mayor, elevation Musicians (like “John Lennon”): date of birth, place of birth, nationality Actors (like “Audrey Hepburn”): date of birth, place of birth, nationality Politicians (like “Anwar Al-Sadat”): date of birth, place of birth, nationality U.S. Presidents (like “Zachary Taylor”): date of birth, place of birth, political party Baseball Players (like “Wade Boggs”): games, at bats, earned run average, position Chemical Elements (like “Helium”): atomic number, discovered by, atomic weight Chemical Compounds (like “Isopropyl Alcohol”): chemical formula, melting point, boiling point, density Stars (like “Betelgeuse”): constellation, distance, mass, temperature Planets (like “Saturn”): number of moons, length of day, distance from sun, atmosphere Dinosaurs (like “Velociraptor”): height, weight, when it lived Ships (like “USS Chesapeake”): length, displacement, complement, commissioned Companies (like “Hewlett-Packard”): employees, ceo, ticker
9. Take a look at other Google functions in the “Google” tab of this page: http://documents.google.com/support/spreadsheets/bin/answer.py?answer=82712&ctx;= 10. “wow”, again and again
These are the reasons why web-based apps are far more superior than desktop-based ones. And with more and more microformats, I bet this funtion will definitely improve the way we organize information. That could make a pretty corporate goal ;-)”
Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)