All articles with 'ideas' Tag

In our Utopian imaginations all the data would have been standardized and shareable across systems and people. But alas, the reality is totally different. We seldom get data in the format / way we desire it to be. In other words, the ingredients are all there, but for us to prepare the dinner, you must […]

Saturday we were in no mood to cook, we were feeling all tired up after roaming in Seattle. So we ordered pizza from dominos pizza website. The ordering process is simple and straight forward. But what awed me most is the pizza tracker. Once you place the order they show you this pizza tracker: That […]

Dont think of me as a perverted spreadsheet user, I like visualizations in any form or shape. There is so much data even about human relationships like love and sex. This article shows 10 of the most visually beautiful and insightful of the infographics on sex and love. Click on the titles above images to […]

I am coffee drinker. And I love various types of coffee; be it the Chennai strong filter coffee or the medium-blend of Starbucks, I just love to sip a cupfull every morning. Since I love coffee so much I thought why not share a little secret about coffee buying with you all. Assuming you buy […]

Spelling mistakes are a thing of day to day carporate life. Most of the data in spreadsheets is entered by people and hence prone to having spelling mistakes or alternate spellings. For eg. a person named John could have been spelled as Jon. And when John calls you back to confirm his reservation and you […]

As mentioned earlier we have moved to Seattle this Sunday. It seems like a great place already. Just that everything is more expensive than we are used to in Columbus. But I guess that is the premium we have to pay for being in a big city. On to this week’s edition of excellent excel […]

The new Microsoft “Hi, I am PC” ads are supercool. Apple has been making fun of PC (and PC users) for while with the “I am PC, I am Mac” ads and the response from MS advertising team is nothing short of brilliant. With these simple & funny ads, they have changed the focus from […]

There are few charts in excel that are as revolting as a radar chart. The purpose of a radar chart is to compare m options across n parameters so that audience can be convinced that option A is better than say option B. But, I am yet to come across a radar chart that tells […]

My guest post on monitoring web page changes using google docs is posted in Digital Inspiration – one of the most popular technology blogs. Do read it to learn a little bit about using XPATH, RSS Feeds, Google Spreadsheet import() functions. Here is a summary of the technique: First go to the web page which […]

We have a major power outage in Ohio due to a wind storm on Sunday. AEP, Our electric provider says that power would be restored to my area by this Friday midnight, that is almost 6 days without power. I will not be able to blog regularly during this period. So here is a list […]

By integrating services like Google Finance, Search in to spreadsheet functions, google docs has paved the way for endless possibilities. Google spreadsheet function GoogleFinance() can be used to build stock portfolio tracker sheet that can fetch historical stock quotes to tell how your money is doing. Click here to see the stock portfolio tracker sheet […]

This is 4th part of Creating Management Dashboards in Microsoft Excel 6 post series by Robert. This 6 Part Tutorial on Management Dashboards Teaches YOU: Creating a Scrollable List View in Dashboard Add Ability to Sort on Any KPI to the Dashboard Highlight KPIs Based on Percentile Add Microcharts to KPI Dashboards Compare 2 KPIs […]

Gauges are a familiar metaphor, everyone can understand them, you can see them everywhere – near your stove, ac, car, gaming console, pc – you name it. So, when you are preparing a chart to tell a point, gauge chart like the one above can be effective. (I know charting pros like Jon Peltier wouldn’t […]

Often when you are processing text using excel it is important to split the text in to multiple parts based on a delimiter. For eg. you may want to divide this|needs|to|be|split in to five parts this needs to be split. There is a simple way to do this in excel, using “import text” option. But […]

Once every week Pointy Haired Dilbert celebrates the art of chart making by sharing 4-5 of the best info-graphics featured in various web sites. Click here to see the visualizations featured earlier. Anatomy of a Great Speech – Obama’s acceptance speech at DNC Presentation Zen captures Obama’s symphony like acceptance speech in a graph shown […]