Hot Thermometer Charts in Excel - here is a cool way to do them

Let us learn a simple charting hack to create a thermo-meter chart in excel. This type of charts can be effective in communicating one data point, they can make excellent presentation slide or dashboard widget. What more, they are as simple to do as adding whipped cream to your latte. So lets begin:
1. First we [...]

Incredible hulk strikes IMDB - awesome online ad

This is awesome, the new incredible hulk campaign on IMDB is nicely done, I have taken a few screen shots of it to post here, just in case they removed it (but go see it on IMDB to understand what I mean)

This shows how to create incredible advertisements by integrating flash (rich media) with [...]

“I am feeling lucky” Firefox Search plug-in

While trying to understand how the Mozilla firefox search plug-ins work [ more ] I got curious and wrote a search plug-in that will take you to the first Google search result directly instead of displaying the results pages, ie mimicking the “I am feeling lucky” searches. Feel free to download and install it. [...]

Citibank’s brilliant “no panga sab changa” ad

I came across this brilliant ad from Citibank advertising their metro card for Delhi metro, see it yourself.

I have taken Delhi metro first time during my summer internship in 2005. The system was excellent even at that time. I felt proud riding a world class air conditioned carriage from my hotel to the heart of [...]

Creating in-cell bar charts / histograms in excel

Ever since writing the create in-cell pie charts in excel, I have been itching to find a simple enough method to do incell bar graphs. An in-cell bar would probably be more useful and cuter than an in-cell pie as it can instantly provide trending details. What more, these would probably look gorgeous when printed [...]

Dhoni sizzles in Tamilified ads

Spotted these two rather well done ads starring Dhoni. The ads glorify lungi-clad, wild-dancing, movie-loving Tamil spirit while promoting carbonated sweetened beverages and mechanized time indicators.
Dhoni Pepsi ad:

Dhoni Sonata ad:

However well done these ads are, I must admit that you will never probably see anything close to what is depicted in the ads anywhere [...]

Create in-cell pie charts in Excel

Here is a ridiculously easy trick to do nice incell pie charts in excel, what more, they will make you look like a charting wizard.

Download free pie chart font from here (direct download link). The font has 21 pie chart codes starting with empty circle (character ‘a’) and ending with full circle (character ‘u’)
Install [...]