Grid (YC S12) Reinvents The Spreadsheet For The Tablet Age

http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/08/grid-launch/

by irunbackwards • 14 years ago

190 99 14 years ago

zbruhnke• 14 years ago

Kudos to Josh and the rest of the team.

This is something that can change the market in a positive way and hopefully help take iPads from being almost solely a device for consumption to a device used to spur creation and innovation as well

cpr• 14 years ago

Looks great.

Would be nice to see a demo of its number-crunching capabilities, to judge whether it's innovative in that area as well.

milesskorpen• 14 years ago

According to the article, they don't have that yet. Which seems ... surprising.

caublestone• 14 years ago

Really impressive demonstration of re-thinking an unsexy technology that is so important to so many. A great example on how start ups can disrupt a giant like Microsoft by being bold and not giving a shit. Good luck Grid!

floggit• 14 years ago

UI reminds me of MS Maestro. Any idea how much of it is patented by MS ? Either way they would be a great acqui-hire target for MS

Gring• 14 years ago

They have a demo video, here: http://grid.binarythumb.com/

Unfortunately, the sound mix is atrocious. Music is way too loud, one can barely hear the narration. It was so bad that I stopped viewing the video.

ereckers2• 14 years ago

I first listened to this from the TechCrunch article on an iPad through the speakers and it didn't seem all that bad. I got to my desktop and was going to give you a hard time, but listened to it again with my headphones on. Yeah, the sound could definitely benefit from being turned down a few notches toward the middle of the video. Surprisingly it seems to calm down towards the end.

johnrob3• 14 years ago

It seems like the focus is on casual usage (photos, videos, etc). Why not focus more on the business side (i.e. numbers)?

webwright• 14 years ago

I'd go the same route. The features a consumer needs are much lighter. I imagine the hope is that someday people will realize, "Hey wait a minute! This thing kicks Excel's ass!".

Quote from PG:

"Don't be discouraged if what you produce initially is something other people dismiss as a toy. In fact, that's a good sign. That's probably why everyone else has been overlooking the idea. The first microcomputers were dismissed as toys. And the first planes, and the first cars. At this point, when someone comes to us with something that users like but that we could envision forum trolls dismissing as a toy, it makes us especially likely to invest."

http://www.paulgraham.com/organic.html

johnrob3• 14 years ago

They might be better served to drop the 'Spreadsheet' moniker. It leads people to incorrect assumptions about the product and likely filters out potential users. 'Whiteboard', 'Slideshow', and 'Scrapbooking' are all terms that seem to better represent the (current) intended use case.

smikhanov• 14 years ago

Shameless plug: I made an app for that. It's called Scalar (http://scalarapp.com). It takes a different approach to handling calculations than Excel or Grid (abandons the table structure completely), but hey, unlike Grid founders I wasn't on Microsoft Excel team :)

mixmax• 14 years ago

because that niche is already pretty well filled with excel, and it's hard to unthrone a program that is actually really good at what it does.

On the other hand, casual users aren't a natural fit for excel. The program has way too many complicated features, and isn't as simple as it could be. This seems perfect for the casual user that just want to create simple stuff that looks good.

Vargas• 14 years ago

Excel is really, really bad at what it does. It won because of Microsoft's former monopolistic position. Lotus was much better. Most of the heaviest users of spreadsheets just build their own internal "corporate" spreadsheet program.

roycyang• 14 years ago

Great job guys. I've tried in vain to use google docs on my iPad when I was doing wedding planning. This is a killer app.

mikepmalai• 14 years ago

Maestro looks really interesting.

As an excel power user and fan of spreadsheet innovation in general, I always felt that an excel disruptor would probably look and feel more like a robust post-it note than a spreadsheet.

vegashacker• 14 years ago

Seeing those big squares was startling (in a good way). It was like, of course! Why have tiny little horizontal cells on a tablet spreadsheet? And with calendar widget datatypes, images, iPhone data entry... Lots of clever happening here.

I didn't see any formulas though. Not even a sum. I wonder how that's going to be in Grid.

stcredzero5• 14 years ago

Basically, they're trying to get more people to use spreadsheets in a non-business way. People already do, but the natural way to grab more users right now, is to put it on a multitouch tablet.

I think stats and a lot of other serious number-crunching/business oriented software is ready for multitouch disruption. I've been toying with the idea of taking an all-in-one HP multitouch pc and turning it into a "workstation surface" mounted horizontally and implementing serious business apps on it.

I'm in part motivated by my girlfriend's RSI. (Non-carpal tunnel!) Touch interfaces and styluses seem to bother her much less. No stats programs let you use it end-to-end that way.

danso2• 14 years ago

Business spreadsheets most definitely need help, though perhaps mobile Google Drive, which is currently atrocious, is too intimidating to take on.

However, I have to applaud anything that moves our information-consumption into a more delimited, structured form. I love narrative and paragraphs, but Tufte's small multiples is something that would greatly help day-to-day communication

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_multiple

robomartin• 14 years ago

  > Business spreadsheets most definitely need help

In what way? Are you talking about design (look and feel) or capabilities. I can't think of too many things that could be lacking from Excel in terms of capabilities for business and engineering applications.

danso2• 14 years ago

Sorry, I meant in the context of the headline "...for the tablet age"...My experience so far has been with Google Spreadsheets through the iPad browser and it is barely functional. Microsoft's offering may be better, but still short of what traditional Excel users are used to.

In any case, Excel/Google Docs have such a strong, relied-upon foundation that even if someone built a great spreadsheet from scratch that was unparalleled for the tablet audience, the risk of being dominated by a sudden entrance of either Microsoft/Google is probably too much to commit the funding that's needed to build the infrastructure to support such a platform.

I think Grid is doing the right thing, but staying away from the business-type spreadsheet...as there are plenty of ways that spreadsheets are useful, even without numbers. I use spreadsheets all the time to plan out projects and take notes, as I know I want to end up adding categories/subcategories/deadline columns that I want to aggregate/sort upon.

erikpukinskis2• 14 years ago

Excel doesn't lack capabilities, but it lacks in the ability to surface those capabilities to the people who need them.

runemadsen• 14 years ago

I really like the general idea of this app. The killer feature would be an easy way to contribute new features for the tiles, which would basically make Grid into an easy-to-use Microsoft Metro UI.

atacrawl2• 14 years ago

One feature that’s still missing, though, is actually running spreadsheet-style calculations on your numbers in Grid.

Doesn't this preclude Grid from being a spreadsheet app?

mej102• 14 years ago

It isn't even that hard to get a basic implementation of such functionality. Not sure why this is missing.

Just make a directed graph out of cell references. Get the strongly connected components. All of the components with more than one vertex contain a loop and can't be computed. Remove those and you get a directed acyclic graph. Now you can topological sort them for cell dependencies, and start calculating them in the order they are needed.

Or if your language has a dataflow implementation it is even easier. Haven't seen one of these for Obj-C though.

I will add that this looks pretty cool, though.

martythemaniak• 14 years ago

It may be easy, but it'll still take time to develop. If it's not critical and won't keep you from getting your initial batch of users, it's much better to launch and add it in 3 weeks, rather than waiting an extra 3 weeks to launch.

hassy• 14 years ago

You forgot parsing the formulae. You forgot having to decide which functions to include and implementing them. You forgot testing. Sure those aren't super hard, but minutes add up to hours and hours add up to days which turn into weeks. Most importantly, you forgot the UI. Building the UI for entering formulae - one that makes sense on the iPad and not just a copy of the one from Excel or Numbers (those suck) - would take a while.

erikpukinskis2• 14 years ago

Apple could've thrown copy and paste into the first iPhone, but they didn't because they didn't feel they had it right.

They might be in the process of actually designing an interface for formulas that actually expands the reach of such functionality. You know, something that the "I'm bad at math" crowd could actually dig into, make use of, and learn within.

If you release a basic not-that-hard-to-implement version of the functionality, it's WAY harder to drop in a new, innovative model afterwards. I think there's a lot of sense in waiting until they can get it right, if they're planning on doing something different with it--which, judging by the other UI departures they've made, I wouldn't be surprised if they are.

pg3• 14 years ago

No more than any version one of something is precluded from becoming complete.

Maybe you think you're making some sort of important point here. Or maybe you realize your comment is inane and you think it's witty. But (perhaps without realizing it) you and the people upvoting you represent one of the worst forces at work in the world. The people who ridicule new things when they first appear in incomplete form are one of the worst drags on innovation.

I think most people agree now that it's valid strategy, particularly in software, to launch a simple version one of something and then iterate rapidly. I'm constantly pushing founders to do that. And you know what's the biggest thing holding them back? The fear that people will make fun of the first thing they launch.

heartbreak2• 14 years ago

So you're telling me that you would financially back a company that intended to release a photo-sharing application that did not provide an avenue for users to upload photos? Isn't shipping version 1 worthless if what you're actually shipping is version 0.01? (Yes, I realize they haven't released yet.)

I don't think he was being inane, witty, or that he is a part of one of the "worst forces at work in the world." He is simply stating that to advertise your product as spreadsheet software, it should probably include some of the features that users expect to be found in spreadsheet software.

The way I see it, GRID isn't spreadsheet software at all (and doesn't seem to want to be based on the website), and shouldn't be advertising itself as such.

mtkd• 14 years ago

The comment wasn't really in the spirit of HN, but it touches on an important point that gets little visibility.

Much of the current and next wave of new apps are aimed at enterprise (as startups move to markets where the money is).

There is a very high MVP threshold for enterprise.

When 37signals released the next version of Basecamp they took a lot of flack for not including time tracking in first rev (even though their metrics showed few people used it).

It is common in Enterprises to have senior players ready to point out any obvious issues in any recommendation. Apps looking to get in to this market have to recognise this feature of the market - it's just not the same as putting out a new social app.

sankara• 14 years ago

In general it's a fine balance of what makes a v1. It's a huge challenge to identify those features that are must have vs those that are good to have. A poor v1 experience will chase your early adopters away and I doubt many people give a second try at all. But a delayed product and late or no feedback from users would result in building a product that is tangential to what the user actually wants. No amount of user studies would fill in that gap. In this particular case, however, if I'm listing down all my expenses, I definitely would also want to sum it up and expect that sum to automatically update too. If I and those who think so are in the minority, well and good. For an app so elegant, no one would want or hope it to fail. But if you are releasing the app and not expecting or ready for honest feedback, I can't see a point in releasing it in the first place.

ObeyTheGrid• 14 years ago

>And you know what's the biggest thing holding them back? The fear that people will make fun of the first thing they launch.

Good.

The software world is absolutely flooded with half baked crap backed by expensive marketing. As a software user it's a waste of my time when somebody releases "A Simply Remarkable Spreadsheet" that allows you to "organize and work with them in a whole new intuitive way" and it lacks the basic features I expect from a spreadsheet (I suppose that is indeed remarkable). Worse, it leads to a situation where customers don't trust software developers to provide the things they say they are providing.

What would you have us do? Not criticize massively hyped app releases that are backed by millions of dollars of VC money because we might hurt somebodies feelings? If you are going to make a big fanfare about your new 'spreadsheet' app, then you have to be prepared for the (predictable) negative reaction when it turns out it isn't actually a spreadsheet at all. Don't get pissed off when it gets criticism after you flood all the tech news sites with press releases and submit your site to all the aggregators and email dozens of bloggers.

The people doing this are savvy and know what they are doing, which is basically conning users with false promises. They know it will earn them criticism from people who are paying attention, they don't care, they are in it for the money. Your portrayal of the innocent, uncertain, timid startup CEO is pretty laughable. These are business graduates that decided to go into software startups because they think there is more money in it than investment banking at the moment, many have never written any software themselves.

You can whine all you want but customers are always going to complain when the product does not meet the description. It's really quite simple to avoid this though: stop lying in your marketing.

Edit: I didn't mean to make it sound like I think the Grid folks themselves are actually upset about this criticism, I'm sure they are not. They must have had many meetings trying to decide if they should call it a spreadsheet even though it isn't, and they obviously decided to do it because they feel they will get more attention as a 'mobile spreadsheet' rather than some vaguely defined data organiser. It was a calculated move that seems to be paying off at the initial launch at least, since the app is getting far more attention than most.

atacrawl2• 14 years ago

I asked a straightforward question about whether an app that can't be used to create a spreadsheet should be considered a spreadsheet app, and because of that I "represent one of the worst forces at work in the world." I neither ridiculed nor made fun of Grid, as you claim I did; however, you seem to take pleasure in ridiculing and making fun of me. I'm sorry that I didn't heap the app with praise -- from the video I saw, it does look like an impressive beginning. Perhaps if I had, my question would have been met with an answer without such disrespect.

JumpCrisscross2• 14 years ago

Founders' emotional reactions to criticism aside, isn't one of the chief benefits of releasing quickly the market input? One can feel sad about that feedback or, after properly weighting it, parse it as the valuable guidance it is.

The markets provide cruel, ruthless feedback in the form of buy/pass behaviour. Getting that feedback as early as possible on one's MVP is insightful, albeit painful. Criticism can be more valuable than atomistically binary market activity by providing insight into why the market is behaving as it is (or will be).

Given the specific case, if the founders are working on a feature to fill the hole discussed, great - they have a bit of validation. If not, they have the opportunity to consider it. Either way, I don't see why there is a reason to get beaten up about it.

Negative feedback is as much a drag on innovation as market rejection. At worst, it should be a non-factor.

killwhitey• 14 years ago

Maybe I'm just not familiar with modern usage of the word 'spreadsheet' but when I hear it I instantly think of accounting worksheets, visicalc, excel and the like. If the very core of this app isn't the same as a classic spreadsheet app, why even throw that word around? It's bad marketing.

killyourheros• 14 years ago

Maybe you think you're making some sort of important point here. Or maybe you realize your comment is inane and you think it's witty. But your ego is showing.

scott_s• 14 years ago

I read it as an honest question, not ridicule.

brudgers• 14 years ago

I took the comment as questioning the terminology not poking fun or being particularly snarky. I see the comment along the lines of "aren't numerical manipulations an essential property of spreadsheets?"

These days, a spreadsheet that doesn't calculate is an edge case given thirty years of mainstream usage of the term. Though having had the pleasure of revising letters my boss drafted in Lotus 123, I can accept the proposition that calculations are an accidental property.

Disrupting the spreadsheet requires convincing people that "spreadsheet" is not synonymous with "Excel." A task which is probably harder than it should be given that Excel is a reasonably practical tool for preparing Gantt charts or a data table for a mail merge [tasks for which I have used Excel on more than one occasion].

Richard Diehl's Tabulus is another interesting approach in the opposite direction.

bootload• 14 years ago

"... But (perhaps without realizing it) you and the people upvoting you represent one of the worst forces at work in the world. ..."

I feel a disturbance in the force.

"... Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say in a face to face conversation. When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names ..." ~ http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

MrMan2• 14 years ago

I think that the fear of ridicule is very healthy. It is one force that acts to discourage us from being inundated with solutions that are incomplete or half-baked, and which might not even be solving the right problem.

I like the data entry technique for the tablet which is at the heart of this demo. But there is no reason to throw around the word "innovation," even when warding off the worst forces at work in the world.

On the desktop, that dead platform, UI designers have been inventing new user controls for many years, and packaging them as products. But no one important comes to their frantic defense when one of these bundles of features is under-appreciated by its intended audience. Perhaps that says something about the current environment? Maybe we should just let these new-ish hardware and software platforms mature without getting breathless or aggressive when contemplating them.

ekianjo2• 14 years ago

I think the question was very valid. It's like if you describe "an word processing app, but for now it only integrates pictures in the document. Typing function to come later!" - in the same way a spreadsheet is not software that is used to put pictures and tables. Expectations when you see the word "spreadsheet" is being able to run complex, calculations, and maybe macros to accelerate your workflow. Calling this piece of software "spreadsheet" is an abuse of what spreadsheets have been standing for, for a very long time now.

Johngibb5• 14 years ago

Maybe you're reading way too much into their comment, and unfairly jumping into a judgement? I didn't sense the same feeling of ridicule. If the founders are on here, how did you take it?

I interpreted it his question as genuinely wondering if "the ability to calculate formulas is a defining characteristic of a spreadsheet." Perhaps it's not, but it's not something to bite his head off for!

Jumping to conclusions and failing to give the benefit of the doubt is another drag on intelligent discourse and innovation!

clarky07• 14 years ago

To me the parent's statement was entirely valid. A spreadsheet has a certain definition to many people. That definition includes doing calculations. While people use programs like excel to do many other things that Grid will be good at, that doesn't make it a spreadsheet app. Also, this is a very rude comment with name calling etc. that clearly doesn't follow the HN guidelines. If somebody other than pg wrote it it would be heavily downvoted by now.

samstave2• 14 years ago

PG,

You are wrong in this post.

The colloquial definition of a spreadsheet app in about 100% of the world at this time is the ability to do calcs.

This video is fantastic, but what shows is currently purely a layout app (hence the grid nomenclature) - frankly - it is a visual Workflowy.

Also, you know what is a drag on innovation, lack of cordial discussion (I am a perpetrator of this myself - even on HN, I get emotionally involved in something and it takes another HN user's response to give me perspective) - and I think you were harsh in your comment, and rather than foster discussion about this, you attacked the OP.

I am sure all of us agree with: "I think most people agree now that it's valid strategy, particularly in software, to launch a simple version one of something and then iterate rapidly"

But I found nothing snide in the OP at all.

bconway• 14 years ago

Really surprised to see something like this from Paul. Totally not in the spirit of HN.

tripzilch• 14 years ago

Come on, that was a perfectly reasonable question.

It looks like a really cool app but as soon as they said it can't do spreadsheet calculations just about everybody that has ever used a spreadsheet must have immediately had the same thought, "wait a minute, then, how is it a spreadsheet?"

And asking that question is not ridicule, or making fun of the first thing someone launches.

And IF the question is critical of anything then surely it is of TC misrepresenting the app as "a spreadsheet app for tablets".

Because really, it's quite clear: as long as it doesn't do spreadsheet calculations, it's not a spreadsheet app. Instead, it's a grid. Which is in fact what it's called and it looks great.

And the minute they add spreadsheet calculations to the feature list, it'll ALSO be a spreadsheet. Happy now?

It's funny because I always thought jumping straight at the throats of people that dare to ask questions is one of the worst forces at work in the world.

It's not even a difficult question. Do you seriously think the developers of that app live in FEAR of having to say "yeah right now it's a grid. spreadsheet calculations will be in the next beta soon and then we'll call it a spreadsheet, TC just jumped the gun a bit". Must be absolutely terrifying, having to accurately describe the functionality of your application in its current version.

revorad2• 14 years ago

Actually, a lot of people use Excel just as a table to list things in a semi-structured way. They don't even know how to do a sum in Excel. Grid looks like a huge improvement for them.

This is way slicker than the first versions of most products.

flipside• 14 years ago

Grid is redefining what a spreadsheet can do on a tablet. When building something new, might as well build and experiment with the new features first to see if people really want them. Demand for calculations is a given.

Nobody would care if they released a "new" spreadsheet app that did calculations, but with innovative features still on the to do list.

Grid is taking the right approach and personally I think it looks sexy as hell.

mc32• 14 years ago

>Grid is redefining what a spreadsheet can do on a tablet.

Yes, but it is, simultaneously, in its current incarnation, defining what spreadheet apps can't do.

Sexy sells for the genral public, but as other have pointed out, in the enterprise, sexy is much less important. More important is functionality. Maybe in it's next iteration, it will meet the demands of the office worker, currently, I don't see that, beyond helping coordinate parties or meetings.

yumraj• 14 years ago

It does look great and is beautiful indeed and has very specific use cases. I might even be interested in using it.

But that wasn't the point, IMvHO the point was that if it doesn't walk/talk/act/etc. like a spreadsheet, don't call it a spreadsheet and confuse your users when the basic feature that has been in spreadsheet's since VisiCalc is missing. Call it what it's called, the Grid and leave it there.

logique• 14 years ago

Very much agree. I would call it a gridded paper canvas / sketch book rather then spreadsheet. The metaphor is one of a generic data presentation context / place holder rather than 2d relational modeling medium, a compute data context such as a spreadsheet. Sure you can draw pixel art in excel but it is an abuse of the potential of the medium rather then the primary reason for it. You can do the same in MS Paint for instance but not the other way around.

Moreover my reaction to criticism by pg on your comment is that while the demo video is indeed neat, it is also a bit contrived. I would rather shoot myself than go through all these steps to make plan for a simple camping trip. I cannot also imagine doing any serious data work on it. It is not about being negative to the idea of potentially a useful implementation of spreadsheets in tablets, but when a particular design is presented you cannot not have a critical debate for the sole reason of demotivating innovation. It is exactly the other way around, criticism is the only way you may get an agro objectivish feedback for what may or not work in a design and seek to improve.

tapertaper• 14 years ago

Excel power user here. Any plans for inter-compatibility?

If Grid can simply view other spreadsheet formats (even stripped of formulas and formatting), you'll get a lot of looks from the business world.

revorad2• 14 years ago

This looks fantastic. The lack of computation is a surprising but very novel take on the idea.

yabbadabbadoo• 14 years ago

I shrugged this off at first, but that video blew my mind.

Awesome work guys. Definitely using this for an upcoming roadtrip. And more :)

kennystone• 14 years ago

Beautiful UI and a great opportunity. The iPad demands to be taken everywhere, and Apple has proven with iWork - Keynote especially - that office apps can be awesome on a tablet. Google's Spreadsheet webapp, on the other hand, is completely unusable on touch devices.

johnrob3• 14 years ago

I didn't see any mention of how you share with people - do they have to have the app as well? Can you just send them a link and let them view in a browser?

newman314• 14 years ago

When I first heard about this, I was excited. But upon looking at the video, it's not what I thought it would be.

I'm still looking for an app that uses a spreadsheet-like UI in order to be able to ask whatif and model data pulled from backend datasources.

This would be infinitely more useful (for my use cases).

kposehn• 14 years ago

Their greatest strength - social collaboration - is also a potential weakness.

While I like the idea and the mechanic, the initial emphasis on social integration of a spreadsheet makes the assumption that others will be able to A: willing to download the app when invited & B: be able to use it with minimal instruction in a collaborative fashion.

This may be something that many more tech-savvy users will embrace, but despite the simplicity of the UX it does require a mental hurdle to cross in order to utilize it fully. I think many people will certainly overcome that, but the question is how many. Is the market of users large enough for this use case? Of course, I may also be simply reading too much into the video - there will be plenty of other uses for this sort of app.

I think this will become less and less of a problem as the next generation of tech users come of age and embrace technology like this. They're growing up with this sort of functionality and will use it in ways we can't yet anticipate. What Grid certainly has going for it is one of the most solid guesses at that sort of interaction I've seen so far.

Despite my initial misgivings, I definitely want to give it a try.

jmduke2• 14 years ago

I have two use cases for Excel:

1. Number crunching with the goal of creating charts/tables to be placed in either documents or presentations. 2. Detailed analysis of a given data set.

I think the former is ripe for application in the tablet space; most of my presentations, at the very least, tend to be 'here, let me talk and rely on visualization for the things that aren't easily conveyed with speech' -- honestly, an app where I can create multiple charts and broadcast them will be great.

Grid seems to be eschewing this use case in favor of having spreadsheets as tabularly organized content. While I don't have any specific issue with this, I don't see what problem or opportunity it addresses beyond "hey, nobody's done this!"

I can see it having merit with the few times I'll use a GDoc spreadsheet for organizing, say, who brings what to a party (and I do suppose that GDocs is a fairer comparison to Grid than Excel, at this stage), but being tablet-only hamstrings that effort.

I guess, overall, my question is: "What can I do with Grid that I can't do with anything else?"

hiddenstage• 14 years ago

Judging the UI and video, it appears they are catering their market towards consumers when I think they should be catering towards businesses. The only time I've used a spreadsheet for personal use was calculating a budget; but there are better apps than Grid for that (Mint).

If I wanted to go camping with friends, I'd call/text/email them and use a text editor to keep track of names and items that we need.

Now if they can get businesses to be productive on their tablets and phones on the other hand....

ereckers2• 14 years ago

Looks slick. I've got a use case for this. I help run an online accessories boutique with my partner. She works with editorial teams from numerous magazines in which they trade images, description, pricing, and other misc information for product features for upcoming issues. You know what they use? Spreadsheets. They look atrocious too.

I could definitely see where something like this could be used to replace their current workflow. The fact that this can work on a tablet is even better. You know why? She prefers doing this type of work in the evenings, on an iPad, as we're relaxing away from our desks.

It looks good. Seems easy to use, and looks fashionably well done; complete (really, you should see these spreadsheets they share back and forth).

The only thing I've ever wondered about these types of tools -- with so many good new options coming out seemingly daily, is how you would get people on-board? I can see it working once everyone can agree to start using it, but getting people to completely change there toolset and workflow (especially if other partners are not, can not, or will not adopt it) can be a tough nut to crack.

politician2• 14 years ago

I think that's where the interop story becomes a critical feature to drive adoption.

jpxxx• 14 years ago

I am in love with what I'm being shown. Super-rich compound multi-user documents. It could be fantastic wallboard software. Or you could just call it a wedding planner and it would be a minor sensation.

politician2• 14 years ago

In my opinion, this app is a reinvention of that idea of the touch-enabled photo tabletop -- the one where you can slide around photos and sort of pile them into collections. We've seen that demo on TED and I'm pretty sure on Microsoft's old Surface tabletop.

They've taken that basic idea, and made a really cool semi-structured visualization, and added interesting widgets like the map.

If you look at it from that angle, you've got something that really sounds pretty interesting and something that, hey, if I have a few bucks sure I'll play with it.

rhplus• 14 years ago

"He was the designer of Microsoft’s upcoming Excel 2013, after all"

The concepts look great, but the pitch that he was "the designer of Excel 2013" rubbed me the wrong way. The Office UX design team is not a one man show. I thought maybe the reporter was puffing things up a little, but even on Josh's personal website[1] he's claiming he was the designer.

"I worked as the Excel 2013 designer which I transitioned into from a software engineering role"

[1] http://joshleong.com/

davisml• 14 years ago

So it's graph paper that you can talk to?

Grid (YC S12) Reinvents The Spreadsheet For The Tablet Age

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