Fwd: Google spreadsheets!

["John Danaher" <jsd alum mit edu>]

You may have heard earlier this week that Google launched a new online collaborative spreadsheet application, aptly named Google Spreadsheets. What you probably didn't hear (until now) is that I was working on it--yes, Google Spreadsheets has been my secret project-that-cannot-be-discussed for the past 10 months. :)

We've been a small engineering team, so I've had a hand in a lot of
different things, but the core of my work has been on the calculations
and manipulating the live data. So it's been my job to make sure your
numbers come out right, and your formulas don't get messed up when you
insert rows. And try importing and exporting to/from Excel--it works
better than you might expect. On the other hand, I can't take any
credit for the beautiful UI we've ended up with.

If you haven't seen it yet, definitely check it out at
spreadsheets.google.com. We're doing a limited launch so you'll have
to submit your email address and wait for us to activate your account,
but it shouldn't take too long. Alternately, if you're really in a
hurry, I (or anyone else with an account) can invite you in.

Anyway, I'm relieved to finally be able to talk about what it is I
work on all day. Let me know what you think of it!

 - John