Collaborating Information on Bike Sharing

There's a new trend in public transportation called "Bike Sharing" - discussed in a BusinessWeek article and well-followed by a blog by MetroBike LLC. MetroBike recently blogged about a collaborative spreadsheet started by TransLink (South Coast British Columbia Transportation Authority) which is attempting to share information about these Bike Sharing programs across all the cities which provide them. An interesting use case in global collaboration online - with a green tint ;)

Site:	Bike-Sharing by MetroBike
Page/Post:	Online Public Bicycle System Inventory
Spreadsheet:	Public Bicycle System Inventory Spreadsheet

Project Plan Gantt Chart

Antonio Lupetti strikes again... Last time, he posted a descriptive project planning template using Google spreadsheets. This time, he's got a spreadsheet which produces a gantt chart of your project tasks using conditional formatting.

Site:	Woork Blog
Page/Post:	Gantt Chart using Google Spreadsheets
Spreadsheet:	Gantt Chart Spreadsheet

Project Planning Spreadsheet

The Woork Blog (spelling intentional) by Antonio Lupetti has a post including a useful Project Plan template using a spreadsheet. The post itself is a good read as it offers an explanation of the meaning of all the data in the spreadsheet including some methods used (like vlookup).

Site:	Woork Blog
Page/Post:	Implement a Project Plan and manage activities with Google Spreadsheets
Spreadsheet:	Project Plan Tutorial
Get Your Own Copy:	This link gives you your own copy of the above spreadsheet to edit

$2 Billion in Investments for Peoria Illinois

Looks like the government of the City of Peoria, IL has begun to use a public blog to share data and information about the city. In particular, there is a post which uses a spreadsheet to outline $2 Billion dollars of investments made, organized in three different ways. While we didn't confirm the source of this blog or the data itself, the profile certainly looks valid... and even if it isn't valid, I figured the idea was good enough to share.

Site:	City of Peoria Economic Development
Page/Post:	$2 Billion in Investment
Spreadsheet:	$2 Billion Invested Spreadsheet

Stock Gumshoe Tracks Stock Tips

The Stock Gumshoe blog is for people who are "frustrated or intrigued by email teasers from investment newsletters and advisers". It includes a spreadsheet which tracks the investment advice of these investment newsletters which provide, for lack of a better name, "Stock Tips". Travis Johnson, the author of this blog and another investment blog (called OneGuysInvestments) says on that other blog that he's "not an investment advisor, registered or otherwise, so don't follow my moves unless you're happy to lose money without suing someone.". Notice in this spreadsheet, Travis' smart use of links in cells to point viewers to specific blog posts for each of the investments being tracked... Great way to offer value to readers but also to syndicate your pages to other sites.

Site:	Stock Gumshoe Blog
Page/Post:	Sock Gumshoe's Tracking Spreadsheet Page
Spreadsheet:	Stock Gumshoe Tracking Spreadsheet

Data: Church Attendance by Income

Political Animal is a, you guessed it, political blog as part of Washington Monthly... They took posted some data about church attendance mapped to median incomes and someone on the post commented with a spreadsheet in return showing the data and the chart re-created. Worth a look as an example of a scatter chart.

Site:	Washington Monthly
Page/Post:	Political Animal
Spreadsheet:	US States: Church Attendance v.s. Median Income

Bike Race Results

In their own words: "Bike Monkey is a growing advocacy group in Sonoma County that aims to utilize cycling as a means of benefiting the community in a variety of ways."... They used a spreadsheet to show the results of a bike race, which looks lke a good template for other bikers out there.

Site:	Bike Monkey
Page/Post:	Blog posts in November
Spreadsheet:	Lake Sonoma Bike Race Results

Knitting Patterns fit well in a spreadsheet

If you make the columns really narrow, you get a great knitting pattern template... So discovered an Austin, Texas Craigslist user who posted a spreadsheet example of such a knitting pattern. Comment here if you've ever done the same...

Site:	Craigslist in Austin, Texas
Page/Post:	Knit anything lately?
Spreadsheet:	Knitting Pattern (Eye Patch)

Inventory lists to improve Craigslist listing

An Ohio-based comic collector and seller uses a spreadsheet to manage a public inventory which he can show on Craigslist - making it easier for buyers to see everything he has for sale in one page...

Site:	CraigsList for Columbus, Ohio
Page/Post:	1500 Comics
Spreadsheet:	Comic Book Inventory

Page/Post:
Spreadsheet

Fantasy Basketball Tracking

Fantasy sports players are some of the most creative spreadsheet users. Here's a sample from the NBA.Com fantasy leagues, where a user posted his spreadsheet link for his league by division, draft round, etc. It's very nicely formatted and a great example for those of you aspiring fantasy sports coaches.

Site:	NBA.Com
Page/Post:	Fantasy Forums (specific post removed it seems)
Spreadsheet:	Basketball Fantasy League Tables

Coin Collecting and Trading

Geo-aware coin collectors commonly post their "trading lists" on the GeoCaching.com user forums (known as GroundSpeak). One user thouht it would be helpful to collect all these trading list URLs into a well organized spreadsheet. That spreadsheet is now like a navigation page to all the trading lists posted by users.

Site:	Geocaching.com
Page/Post:	Trading List Post
Spreadsheet:	Geo-COIN Trading Lists

Audi A2 Fuel Consumption

The International Audi A2 Owners club seems like a pretty active online community. One user posted a Fuel Consumption log that looks like it's been maintained since February of 2005. Most interesting was the calculation which shows this automobile achieving 62 miles per gallon!

Site:	Audi A2 Int'l Owners Club
Page/Post:	Alan_UK Spreadsheet Post
Spreadsheet:	Audi A2 Fuel Consumption Log

Vista Compatibility Matrix

The Cornell.Edu wiki has this useful table of software products' compatibility status when running on Windows Vista. Very useful when trying to identify potential issues whn upgrading if you run one of the products listed. The matrix includes things like who tested (with a link), functionality notes, workarounds, versions, and links to vendor support pages.

Site: Cornell.edu wiki
Page/Post: Cornell Wiki post
Spreadsheet: Vista Compatibility Matrix

Compiled List of Running Races

This spreadsheet will prove very useful to those runners in Central Ohio who agree with DrewEOB on the runningahead.com forums - who says: "I'm not a huge fan of fishing through five or more sites to find some races, so I put together my listing. It's certainly not exhaustive, but it's got some depth...". Wouldn't it be nice if there were one of these for every state or region!? (i can't understand why Drew didn't post a link to this spreadsheet from his own blog... it's really useful!)

Site: RunningAhead.com forums
Page/Post: Central Ohio race Listing
Spreadsheet: Upcoming Races in Central Ohio

Hiking & Camping Gear List

A Pacific Northwest Trail enthusiast posted this very well formatted hiking gear list as a spreadsheet. It's categorized (e.g. clothing, cooking, first aid, sleeping, etc) and it summarizes the weight of the items - which is critical for hikers.

Site: Pacific Northwest Trail Forums
Page/Post: PNT o7 Trail Report
Spreadsheet: Pacific Northwest Trail Gear List

Multi-person Fitness Tracking

A climber in New Hampshire posted a spreadsheet which logs physical fitness training for himself and a group of friends. As he describes it, "the training log made it even more fun for me creating a friendly competition amongst friends, and especially yourself."
It's a multi-sheet spreadsheet, with summary sheets and a single sheet per participant.

Site: Climbing, Thoughts, Reflections
Page/Post: Training...Always
Spreadsheet: August 2007 Training Log

Local Election Data

Someone on the NJ.com forums posted historic election data for the city of Trenton, NJ in a spreadsheet. This allows the viewers to see trends across election years for stats such as numbers of registered voters, votes per candidate, etc.

Site: NJ.Com Forums
Page/Post: Forum Post entitled: Trenton Election Data
Spreadsheet: Trenton Municipal Elections Data Sheet

Horse Racing: Breeders' Cup Data

Steven Crist of the Daily Racing Form, uses spreadsheets very effectively to share horse racing data with "some links to get you in the mood". The Breeders' Cup is the latest target on this featured blog post ... "The two links below are what we'll be using all week as continuing work-in-progress Breeders' Cup scratch sheets. Right now they're just the pre-entries in alphabetical order by race".

Site: Daily Racing Form
Page/Post: Breeders' Cup Spreadsheet Links
Spreadsheets: Breeders' Cup 2007 Friday / Breeders' Cup 2007 Saturday

Baseball as a business

The Squawking Baseball blog posted a spreadsheet which seems to compile several different sources of data about the financial side of baseball. We can't endorse the accuracy of the data, but it's a good example of data sharing.

Site: Squawking baseball blog
Page/ Post: Benefits of (and need for) Aggragated Data
Spreadsheet: Forbes/Financial World Data (not sure if that name reflects the sources)

Biker's Training Diary and Plan

Colin Griffiths shares plenty of tidbits as a racing bicyclist on his blog - including a spreadsheet he used as a generalized training plan. You bikers out there might want to contact Colin and ask him to provide a link to the version you can save as your own.

Site: Colin Griffiths' Biking Bits
Page/Post: A Gerneralised Training Plan?
Spreadsheet: Training Plan

Beer Listings are now a trend on spreadsheets

I thought the prior beer tasting results spreadsheet we posted was just a cute, isolated example - but it seems to be a trend now. An active member/moderator of the Alcohol Report site - TrendKiller Z28 includes a link to a very well-populated Beer Listing spreadsheet in his signature... Last I looked, it had approximately 275 beers included! That's a lot of drinking...er... work!

Site: Alcohol Report
Page/Post: TrendKiller Z28's Profile
Spreadsheet: Beer List

Lord of The Rings Online Gamer Stuff

The gamers have really figured out how to effectively share the details about their favorite games using spreadsheets... Here's one for the Lord of The Rings online game.

Site: Lord Of the Rings Online
Page/Post: Optimal Traits for a Champ
Spreadsheet: Lord of the Rings Traits

Income Statements and Balance Sheets

Dayanand Menashi created the Annual Report Analysis blog to "analyze the annual reports of the businesses [in which he is] interested to invest". He Posted the Balance sheet and Income statement of Infosys in a recent post as part of this analysis... these are now good templates for people looking to use online spreadsheets to document their financial statements. (note: as with other posts here - we cannot confirm the validity of the information posted on these blogs or the related spreadsheets)

Site: Annual Report Analysis
Page/Post: Dissecting INFY's 2Q results
Spreadsheet: Infosys Financials

Book Reading Lists at Harvard Undergrad

Crimson Reading "...helps students save money and support charity by comparing the price of textbooks from online retailers.". They have an online database of book reading requirements across (all?) Harvard Undergrad courses, which is an interesting list to browse.

Site: Crimson Reading
Page/Post: Crimson Reading ISBN Database
Spreadsheet: Crimson Reading Open Source ISBN List

Calculating the efficiency of an Electric Car

A comment on the GM-Volt site (from Darren - Comment #45 on this post) included a link to this Electic Car Efficiency Calcuator. Darren ends his comment with: "My electricity would have to cost more than $0.225 CAD/kWh to make the volt more expensive to drive than a car getting 50MPG. However, it was mentioned before and I agree that they payback isn’t what’s going back into my wallet. The payback is the reduction of my carbon footprint and dependence on foreign oil while driving a car that doesn’t look like a suppository."

Site: GM-Volt Site
Page/Post: What will it cost to drive a Chevy Volt
Spreadsheet: Electric Car Efficiency Calculator

WiFi Hotspots in Erie PA

Global Erie blog posts this list of wifi Hotspots in their local area... in interesting example of using a public spreadsheet, especially if you open it up for editing by more people - so they can add hotspots as they find them.

Site: Global Erie Blog
Page/Post: Tech-Curve - Broadband WiFi
Spreadsheet: Erie PA WiFi Hotspots

Sports Data Consolidated and Shared - NBA

IGN Entertainment has some active message boards where this gem was found. If you're thinking of collaborating to publish some sports data, this is a great example. The formats are nice, the template for on-season data are ready to go (but empty for now), and seems to cover just about all aspects of the sport (Basketball in this case) - General Managers, Payroll/Salaries, Standings, Rankings, drafts, etc.

Site: IGN Boards - Basketball
Page/Post: IGN NBA Off-Season Thread
Spreadsheet: IGNBA 2K8 Master Spreadsheet

Boston Investors Share Stock Data

BostonIBD "is the online group for Boston, Massachusetts area IBD (Investors Business Daily) investors. Join this site to share knowledge about stock investing. We encourage free discussion about investing...". An interesting spreadsheet of the IBD100 stocks was posted to the Google Group where many people gather around this topic.

Site: Boston IBD Group
Page/Post: Public LInk to IBD100 Spreadsheet
Spreadsheet: Boston IBD Spreadsheet

Photo-sharing Sites Comparison

We've seen this done before - using a spreadsheet to compare products or services. This one compares photo-sharing sites... with the caveat that it was posted on a SmugMug forum, so possibly biased... but the example is good (and the data may or may not be).

Site: Indirectly found on Digital Media Thoughts Forums
Page/Post: Photo Site Comparison
Spreadsheet: Photo Site Comparison Spreadsheet

Better service records = better craigslist listing

Here's an idea that someone had - use a spreadsheet first to track their service record of their motorcycle... then publish that spreadsheet and link to it from his craigslist listing. Now that's transparency.

Site: Craigslist / Madison
Page/Post: 1980 Goldwing For Sale
Spreadsheet: 1980 Goldwing Service Record

Hybridizing Roses

If you know any rose gardeners, you know it can become quite a deep hobby. The ultimate level is actually hybridizing - growing new species by combining others. This is real genetic experimentation. The "ploidy database" is actually a set of spreadsheets showing stuff I can explain... I've included links to all 4 spreadsheets (which, arguably, should be distinct sheets within a single spreadsheet).

Site: Rose Hybridizers
Page/Post: Rose-Ploidy Database
Spreadsheets: diploids | Triploids | Tetraploids | Penta/Hexa/octoploids

Growing Tomatoes and tracking results

Earthbox is the self-described "Worlds most revolutionary gardening system". It is a "maintenance-free, award-winning, high-tech growing system controls soil conditions, eliminates guesswork and more than doubles the yield of a conventional garden-with less fertilizer, less water and virtually no effort." In the Forums, there is a discussion and spreadsheet regarding the tracking of results from growing different species of Tomatoes. While their data set isn't extensive (1 row per sheet?), it still is an interesting example for those more daring to collect results collaboratively.

Site: Earthbox
Page/Post: Forum - BER Topic Revisited
Spreadsheet: BER Results for Tomatoes

Tracking Fire & EMS Activity

Here's an interesting one... First, a great discussion with one user explaining to another (rather well) how to use spreadsheets to keep site data updated without worrying about html editing ("Yes, any changes you make to the spreadsheet (and publish) will be visible on the ScanMiamiValley.com web page without me having to do anything.")

Site: Scan Miami Valley
Page/Post: New Feeds Added
Spreadsheet: Frequencies, TalkGroups for Cuyahoga

Investing and tracking stock trades

WUGNET has a pretty broad mission: "Your Complete Resource Center for 'The Best' in Shareware, Computing Tips and Support, Windows Industry News... and much more!". Wow... Here's one corner of the forums where one user helped another to create a great stock investing spreadsheet...

Site: WUGNET
Page/Post: How to make a cell appear blank (that was the question posed)
Spreadsheet: Trading Spreadsheet (Get on that forum and ask this guy for a copy you can edit for yourself!)

Soccer Fan making it easier for others

There's a very active user (Mundial) on the BigSoccer Forums who keeps some great data for certan palyers on "Fulham" (I can't even tell you what league that is... England, I suspect). He's created and kept updated the detailed spreadsheet below for 4 key players.

Site: Big Soccer Forums
Page/Post: Player Logs (Fulham)
Spreadsheet: Fulham 2007-2008

Hybrid Car Mileage Tracking: Honda Civic

CleanMPG is a community site where you can "Learn how to raise fuel economy and lower emissions in whatever you drive". A new user (dSharp) posted this spreadsheet on the forums which tracks and charts his fuel economy. A good example for those who want to do the same.

Site: CleanMPG.com
Page/Post: Fuel Economy and Hybrid Premium
Spreadsheet: Honda Civic Hybrid Mileage Log

Beer Tasting Results

The See For Yourself blog used a spreadsheet to record beer tasting results...Looks like he's completed 13 out of 26 so far. Follow his lead by either using his ratings to pick your next beer or using his idea to create your own tasting results sheet - beer, wine, chocolate, or... breakfast cereal...

Site: See For Yourself Blog
Page/Post: Beer Tasting
Spreadsheet: Beer Libations

Rent or Buy - a calculator

David Ratajczak came up with a model to make (from his perspective) an informed decision.... He says: “At what price is renting preferable to purchasing a house? There are many factors influencing the price of a home or apartment, and the relative valuation of homes remains a matter of both art and preference. But we can still ask, for a given home at a given price, what would be the equivalent rent that I should be willing to pay for that home.” For now, he link below is published only and can't be saved with formulas, but maybe David will offer his working version online (I'll ask him).

Site: David Ratajczak's Blog
Page/Post: Rent Versus Buy
Spreadsheet: Rent vs. Buy Model

Teaching Kids Good Money Habits

The CEO of Boxxet (You Mon Tsang) has some good advice, and a spreadsheet to go along with it, to help teach kids about saving, spending and giving through managing their allowance money. The spreadsheet is a simple log of how a weekly allowance is allocated.

Site: SeedRound - Where it all starts
Page/Post: Fatherpreneurship: The Allowance
Spreadsheet: Kids Allowance Bank

No Child Left Behind Stats for DC

This is an example of publishing information in a very easy to consume form - charts first, and then the underlying data in a spreadsheet if people want it. The charts were published IN-LINE in the blog post, so they appear without the need to follow a link - they are just included in the post. The author, Nathan, sys these charts show "the percentage of students who have tested as 'proficient' in reading and math according to the No Child Left Behind annual report cards. I've broken out the data into four graphs, splitting the data by Elementary and Secondary schools and test type.". To publish charts like this, there's a special option in the chart menu (once your editing a chart) called "publish chart", which gives you a URL of the chart image.

Site: DC Education Blog
Page/Post: NCLB Stats, 2007 Edition
Spreadsheet: DC NCLB Report Card

Gamer Data: City of Heroes

If you know what City of Heroes is, or are interested in this massively multiplayer game - you'll eventually (apparently) get involved in 'base building' - This spreadsheet is described as "... a menu, not a cookbook". Credits in the spreadsheet say it was "compiled by MadScientist with help from the City Boards community. Contact MadScientist on the boards, or global chat @MadScientist. Join global channel BaseBuildersInc for all your base building questions."

Site: City Of Heroes
Page/Post: Help Finding Items
Spreadsheet: List of Base Items and Costs

Product Comparison: GPS Data Loggers

For the GPS buffs out there, GpsPasSion posted this (copyrighted) comparison of GPS Data Logger devices. Good example of using a spreadsheet to capture and compare product specifications.

Site: GPS Passion (aka GpsPasSion), and also found indirectly on DAMbook forums (DAM = Digital Asset Management)
Page/Post: GlobalSat DG-100 Data Logger
Spreadsheet: GPS Data Loggers comparison

Buy versus Rent Calculator

Silver Fern Homes, in Boulder, Colorado, posted a cool spreadsheet back in late 2006 which helps you compare buying versus renting. Plenty of data needs to be plugged in by you (the user of the calculator) to let it help with your particular situation... so you should Get Your Own Copy of this one, so you can edit the assumptions. See their blog post for a full description. As per the note at the top of the spreadsheet: "THIS MODEL HAS BEEN IMPROVED. FOR THE LATEST VERSION (still FREE), PLEASE EMAIL osman@silverfernrealty.com".

Site: Silver Fern Realty - or - Their Blog, entitled The Silver Fern
Page/Post: Buy Versus Rent Using the Model
Spreadsheet: Buy-vs-Rent Spreadsheet
Spreadsheet Template: Click Here to Get Your Own Copy

List of links - Favorite Articles

Using a spreadsheet to organize favorite or useful links to web sites is a common use case we’ve seen. Here is a good example... Frank Kelly in Boston posted “a collection of quite a number (250+) of the many online articles on Java, Software engineering (architecture, the development process), XML etc. that I've read over the last years - probably going back to 2001. I've included a URL and a personal score (on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being awesome).”

Site: The Art and Craft of Great Software Architecture and Development
Page/Post: Favorite Java and SW Eng Articles
Spreadsheet: Ranked List of Articles

Comparing Health Insurance Plans

Here's a great use of a spreadsheet calculator... tell me which health plan is best for MY situation. Marc Hedlund posted a great spreadsheet and a great description along with it on the blog Wheaties for Your Wallet back in November, 2006. If you plan on using this one, you should copy the spreadsheet using the "Get Your Own Copy" link below - this way you can update the assumptions as intended by the author.

Site: Wheaties for Your Wallet
Page/Post: Getting Health Insurance...
Spreadsheet: Comparing Health Insurance Plans
Copy of Spreadsheet: Click Here to get your own copy (this one will open as a copy in your own Google Docs account)

Tracking Diet and Weight on a Spreadsheet

'Big Daddy D' gives us an example of how he used a spreadsheet to track and share his progress on a diet and weight loss plan. The value of tracking the details you'll see in this spreadsheet is the ability to measure how changes in the diet produce the desired (or un-desired) result. Sharing this data lets others use that knowledge for themselves. He says in his Blog: "In April, we switched to a 14 day carb cycle (11 days low and 3 days high). Under both plans, each of us have experienced substantial weight loss. Here, I share my experiences and recipes."

Site: Big Daddy D's Low Carb Life
Page/Post: Carb Cycle Findings (the link to the spreadsheet is in the comments)
Spreadsheet: BDD Diet Log

Recipes: Chocolate Chip Cookies

Megnut.com is written by Meg Hourihan – who is “neither chef nor foodie nor critic. I prefer the label "food enthusiast." I have worked in a variety of jobs -- in a past life I was an internet entrepreneuer and co-founder of Pyra Labs...” (the company that produced Blogger!). Meg posted an excel spreadsheet and a reader (Harlan Harris) uploaded that to Google spreadsheets to share it more easily (Hey Harlan, you can sort more easily now). I can't endorse the recipes (yet), but just reading them makes my mouth water...

Site: Megnut
Page/Post:A "Mean" Chocolate Chip Cookie
Spreadsheet: Twelve Distinct Recipes, Averaged, or, Get your own copy to edit

Personal Investment Strategy - The Crossover Point Calculator

Back in Jan, 2007, Trent posted some ideas around a financial investment concept he credits to the book “Your Money or Your Life”… explaining The Crossover Point as: “the point at which your investments begin to earn more money than the cost of your living expenses. The crossover point is usually reached by keeping your living expenses lower than your income and investing that amount for the long term.”. Comments were added to this post through August, 2007, including one from an un-linked reader named “Owen”, who posted a link to a google spreadsheet which lets others show their own scenario. I copied that spreadsheet, made what seemed to be 1 necessary fix and posted it here for your consumption (the “get your own copy” link below is the best to use on this particular spreadsheet since it is more relevant to edit privately with your own information).

Site: The Simple Dollar blog
Original Concept from the Book: Your Money or Your Life
Page/Post: The Crossover Point - where “Owen”, a reader/commenter, offered his google spreadsheet: “Here’s my stab at Doing something like this with Google Spreadsheets...”. I made some changes to correct what I think was an error and minor format changes - but awaiting comment from Owen if this needs to be re-fixed or pointed to his site/copy.

Spreadsheet: The Crossover Point Calculator | Get Your Own Copy (by clicking this link you will immediately get your own copy in your Google Docs account - or be prompted to sign-in / register)

Game reviews summary for PC, 360, PS3 and Wii

Gamespot forums poster Nerdman offered this spreadsheet with an interesting angle on 'exclusive' deals... He described it like this:
"Here is a Google Spreadsheet I've created that sorts and totals all reviews of games on all major current gen systems since the release of the Xbox 360. I have now, to the best of my knowledge, indicated the exclusives for each platform in orange bold font and totalled them. This list does NOT include arcade/VC ports, etc. If I've missed any let me know."

Site: Gamespot Forums
Page/Post: Current Gen AAA and AA Game List
Spreadsheet: Current Gen AAA and AA Games by Platform

Gamer spreadsheets - World of Warcraft Hunters

Here's a sample of how technical gamers like spreadsheets to track... well... stuff that's important in their game ;) ... This one is for World of Warcraft, and contains lots of well-formatted, easy to read data. Explanations are welcome here as to the general benefits of this use-case, so other gamers can gain insight. (can you tell I'm not a WoW gamer?)

Site: Curse.com or originally in wow-europe
Page/Post: Hunter "Database", which apparently was taken originally from the wow-europe forums
Spreadsheet: Hunter Database v2.3

Vacation Planning Template

Inspired by another spreadsheet posted here - where Disney trips specifically were being planned - this one is generic and can be viewed as a matrix or an agenda. It fills in dates for you (no big deal) and is a good starting point for easy collaboration when planning trips.

Site: JRsays
Page/Post: Planning Vacations Together
Spreadsheet: Sample Trip | TEMPLATE (to edit your own copy)

Campaign Contributions Data (Norman Hsu)

Political use of spreadsheets is more common than you might think. Here's one from SuitablyFlip.com showing campaign contributions made and raised by Norman Hsu from 2003-2007. Suitably notes: "... the contributions are organized by recipient, by contributor, and by individual transaction. This data isn't necessarily infallible, as it's culled from a variety of sources and undergoes a series of iterations, compilations, and aggregations on its way from the source documents to this uploaded format."

Site: SuitablyFlip.com
Page/Post: Hsu, Recobbled
Spreadsheet: Hsu Contributions

Vacation Planning Schedules to Share

This is an example of a trip planner, showing the full itinerary of a vacation in a very useful format - where each day is a column and each critical part of the day is a row (which hotel you're staying in, which sites you're visiting, where each meal is booked, etc). The original is a Disney vacation example - where booking things in advance is critical - but this concept can be applied to virtually any trip - even business trips.

Site: Disney Discussion Forum: DISboards.com
Page/Post: Schedule - Easy to Share
Spreadsheet: Vacation Planner (original, as posted)

Five Friends Meet in Hawaii

A Trip to Hawaii was planned using a spreadsheet for friends living in four different Timezones... a great story...

Snippet: "Today we have been laying out the plans for what we are going to do. Good times. We were sitting in four different time zones and making the plan in Google Spreadsheet. Fernando sitting on Hawaii, Ivan in Minneapolis, Alberto in Tennessee, and Femi and me in Prague."

Site: Blogging Gelle
Page / Post: Going to Hawaii - yay!

Collaboration and Drafts for Sports Fantasy Leagues

David Kaufman gives an overview of the usefulness of collaboration and access from anywhere that players of fantasy leagues get from using Google spreadsheets. He describes his site, Techlife, as "where the crossroads of Technology and Life intersect"... perfect.
A Comment from Mike added: "This year, I formalized my draft tracking (to help learn league tendencies and help project drafting runs, etc.), and created the following quickly using Google Spreadsheets. Very simple, and the graphing provides a nice illustration of this year’s patterns."

Site: TechLife by.David.Kaufman

Page / Post: Fantasy Football and Google Docs - Winning Strategies

Spreadsheets:

• Dave Kaufman's 2007 NFL Schedule
• Draft Tracking from Mike (who commented and offered this one)

Hawaiian Language Lessons

Podcasts to learn Hawaiian - with spreadsheets of dictionary terms as a companion learning resource...

Site: Learning Hawaiian for Beginners
Page / Post: Beginning Hawaiian Class Lectures
Spreadsheet: Concise Hawaiian Dictionary

Even Tailgaters need to be organized

The Jolly Good Fellows of Georgia Tech are serious about their football, and serious about making sure their tailgate parties are well organized. This entry has a bonus - that is, besides a cool spreadsheet, it has a shared Google Calendar of the GT game schedule...

Site: Jolly Good Fellows
Page / Post: Organize, Downsize and Streamline the tailgate party
Spreadsheet: Tailgate Checklist
Calendar: Add the GT Jolly Good Fellows calendar to your Google Calendar List.

Stock Picking, Watching and Competing

TDavid posted a fun spreadsheet back in July which put him head to head against his wife in a stock picking competition...
My wife and I are getting ready for a little friendly stock competition where we’re both starting with a small amount of money and seeing what we can do with it playing the stock market. I thought it would be nice to share with readers how the stocks we’re buying and selling are doing.
[...and added the reasons he chose to use Google spreadsheets...]
- my wife and I can collaborate on the spreadsheet
- it will be easier for my wife to update from her browser any time she wants
- changes to the spreadsheet can automatically updated on the blog
- it will give me a chance to work with the Google Spreadsheet API. This will allow me to be able to include parts of the shared spreadsheet at Hmm (programming required)

Site: Things that make you go Hmm
Page / Post: How to add your own shared updated stock list using google spreadsheets
Spreadsheet: Stock Competition 2007

Organizing Housework

Miss Practical doesn't seem to keep her blog up to date anymore, but this was a great example of someone who really controlled their housework duties. Durations for each task were used as a common reference point to calculate total duration for each day's tasks. Sorry we don't have the template for this one... but let us know if you re-create it from this published version...

Site: Miss Practical
Page / Post: Housework Timetable
Spreadsheet: Household Chores Weekly Rotation

Cleaning house more efficiently and organized

Best way to describe this one is from their site: "Do you feel overwhelmed, overextended, and overdrawn? Hopeless and you don't know where to start? Don't worry friend, we've been there, too. Step through the door and follow FlyLady as she weaves her way through housecleaning and organizing tips with homespun humor, daily musings about life and love, the Sidetracked Home Executives (SHE™) system, and anything else that is on her mind.

Site: FlyLady.net and Flyladies and Flybabies
Page/Post: Discussion re control sheets
Spreadsheet: House Cleaning Zones

Coordinatinating Teams for NYCFIRST Robotics

This is a team list for the NYCfirst community of the First Lego League (FLL), found on a blog by Norm Scott, NYCFIRST Registration coordinator. His blog is described as: A newsletter for the NYCFIRST robotics community in New York City and the surrounding area.

Site: Norm's NYCfirst Blog
Page/Post: Registration update for '07
Spreadsheet: NYCfirst - First Lego League Teams for '07/'08

Project Plan Gantt Charting spreadsheet

Spreadsheets are so often used as simple project planners. Here's a spreadsheet which was posted by David Seah on his blog in excel format, but then Kent Larsson (in the comments) imported it into Google spreadsheets for the rest of us who are not too interested in downloading and unzipping a file... It's simple and nice looking, so could save you some time - Thanks David and Kent!

Site: David Seah - Better Living through New Media
Post/Page: Manual Gantt Charting...
Spreadsheet: Project Plan Gannt Chart   |   Get your own copy

Investment Spreadsheet with scenarios

This spreadsheet from Hackszine was a collaborative effort...
Described by Jason Striegel: Thanks to the hundreds of you who have collaborated and experimented with the document in the last couple of days, I've put together an update that accounts for your pre-tax 401k contributions as well as a home loan. Special thanks to James G. McIlhargey, who contributed the loan debt model! In the interest of proving a point, I've put together 3 example scenarios of very normal people becoming wealthy by being excessive in their frugality.

Site: Hackszine
Post/Page: Investment Spreadsheet 2.0
Spreadsheet: Link to shared version | Get your own copy

Losing Weight through Caloric Deficit Tracking

This is a really nice spreadsheet which helps track and calculate all sorts of body mass, fat, caloric info towards the goal of losing weight in a healthy way.

Site: TribalWar Forums
Page/Post: Look for it on this Forum post page
Spreadsheet: Published version | Get your own copy

The poster - woodfucious - offered this spreadsheet in a post which included the following:
Hussman Fitness (http://www.hussmanfitness.org)
This site has some great information about nutrition and calorie management. Just read sections 1-6 and ignore the Body for Life stuff. Once you get calculate your BMR and get a consistent caloric deficit going you'll start dropping weight fast.
Using a spreadsheet to track progress is very helpful. Here's the one I've been using: Google Docs & Spreadsheets - caloric deficit tracker v2 (http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=prwmoocXtPh3xXAqZ rQJSYA)

Blood Sugar Tracking for managing diabetes (again)

Carol in the UK welcomes people to her blog: Welcome to my blog about diabetes. I am embarking on an attempt to alleviate if not cure my type 2 diabetes through the elimination of trans isomer fats from my diet, following the plan advocated by Dr John Midgely. (more...)

Site: Getting the Better of Type 2 Diabetes

Post/Page: (It's actually linked from the right pane of the blog)

Spreadsheet: See it Here

Tracking Blood Sugar Levels on a spreadsheet

I've seen many examples of people with diabetes tracking their blood sugar levels on a spreadsheet - sometimes in association with their diet/food intake. This is a site where Sherrie shares her experiences as a diabetic. I've only seen the public ones, like this - I bet there are many more private ones...

Site: Piece-by-piece
Post/Page: Blood Sugar Readings on a spreadsheet
Spreadsheet: See Sherrie's spreadsheet or Get Your Own Copy
Other: Great description for creating your own spreadsheet online...