WikiCalc is a new piece of online software from Dan Bricklin that is attempting to bring the venerable spreadsheet to the Web. NewsForge is running a review of the initial alpha release and it seems pretty good. Recently he was interviewed on the Gillmor Gang about this software and his ideas around it. It is a fairly nice idea now that we live in an Internet full of Ajax and rich interaction. My initial feeling was that he was angling for a Google/Microsoft/Yahoo buyout but surprisingly he has put the source code online for others to download. This is a good thing from a free software perspective and hopefully with the support of others there will soon be a viable (and hopefully embeddable) spreadsheet application for the Web.
On the subject of Google last week TechCrunch ran screenshots of Google's Calendar application that is still in development. It seems nice enough though the market is getting pretty full of Ajax calendars. It will be nice if it can pull events out of plain text email and display your schedule in GMail in a similar way that Zimbra can tell you whats happening 'tomorrow' or 'next week' when reading an email. Mike Arrington who runs TechCrunch had a pretty good sparring contest with Steve Gillmor afterwards on the Gillmor Daily podshow. It is quite a funny listen as the pro-Google Steve attacks the more logical and reasoned Arrington on his opinion that Google is more than a little bit evil and are making a number of wrong steps.