Saturday, January 26, 2008

Detailed Sports Statistics - College Basketball

The ACCstats blog posts just about every ACC college basketball statistic you could think of... and very often using an online spreadsheet. For example, the right side of the blog contains links to 12 spreadsheets - 1 for each team - with the detailed stats for every player on each team. That's the sample I'm giving below (for Boston College), but visit that blog for all of those and more great sports samples... [like this additional sample - which is prediction for N.C.State...which is a blog post with an embedded published spreadsheet...]

Site:ACC Stats & More (blog)
Page/Post:Game Preview: VPI at BC
Spreadsheet:2008 Boston College (player stats)

Freediving Competition Results

Freediving is certainly not a mainstream sport - but, like other sports, it brings competition, which of course, leads to online spreadsheets of competitive results (what else could Freediving have in common with, say, Ice Hockey, except for the involvement of H2O ;). The Shark-Freediving blog is where I found this one, and it's a worth example of a competitive sports results spreadsheet. That Blog also had some incredible video and great information about the sport.

Site:Shark FreeDiving Blog
Page/Post:First Day's Results - Preparing for the next day
Spreadsheet:FreeDiving Results

Yes, spreadsheets can be poetic

I've seen this a few times already, but hesitated posting it until now. Vaughn Seward - aka Masago - not only posts one form of poetry to his blog every day, but he also uses spreadsheets extensively to outline his works and some of he meanings and categories behind them. Possibly the most interesting non-numeric applications of spreadsheets I've seen. Now, if Vaughn begins to collaborate online with other poets, we may see a real boom in the real-time-collaborative-spreadsheet-based-poetry market ;)

Site:Masago's Daily Haiku Blog
Page/Post:Rengay through the seasons #21
Spreadsheet:Haiku Poetry Spreadsheet

Auto Service History Spreadsheet

A user on the Chevy TrailBlazer and GMC Envoy forum posted a service history of his vehicle in a spreadsheet. It's not a template that you could use directly yourself, but it is a good sample - and if you really want a copy, the author offered to post an empty template (just go to the forum post and ask). It's certainly good practice to keep a service history like this in a form which could be shared quickly with prospective buyers.

Site:Chevy TrailBlazer and GMC Envoy Forum
Page/Post:Service History Spreadsheet post
Spreadsheet:TrailBlazer Service History Sample

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Serious Bicycling, Tandem Style

I've known some long-time tandem bike riders (yes, for the un-initiated, those are "bicycles built for two"), but the Stoked Blog (named for the term describing the power pedaler on the back - the Stoker) shows that tandem riding is also a domain for the serious biker and racer. Results for recent Tandem Biking time trials, including Heart Rate monitor data, were tracked on a spreadsheet very effectively.

Site:Stoked
Page/Post:Gentleman for 24 seconds
Spreadsheet:Indoor Time Trial Nightly Results

Sunday, January 6, 2008

A GPA Calculator with how-to video

uTIPu is a site which gives the software (tipCam) to capture your own help videos (tips) and a community site through which others can view your video. While the site seems new, someone has posted a video explaining their Google spreadsheet GPA calculator - with a video describing how to use it. They also used the often overlooked (uh... make that un-discoverable) feature called &newcopy, which lets you immediately give someone a copy of your spreadsheet when they click it... so we provide that type of link below as well.

The only thing the author has incorrect is the subtle mistake in "You need a Google (Gmail) account to use it."... A Google Account is NOT the same thing as a GMail account - even though a GMail account IS a Google account, you can also use your existing non-gmail email address to create a Google account and use Google Docs, Calendar, Alerts, Notebook, etc...

Site:uTIPu
Page/Post:GPA Calculator (video and spreadsheet links)
Spreadsheet:GPA Calculator (view only)
Get Your Own Copy:GPA Calculator (EDIT YOUR OWN)

Collaborating on Health Plans from the Mountains

An "online Health Mgmt Consultant" posted a great story of collaboration (not to mention customer service)... in his words:

"...while I was hiking up Mt.Sto.Tomas, a good friend sent me a TXT message asking me to help him crunch some numbers for a provincial health insurance scheme. [...] I rushed down the mountain, hitched a ride with a truck hauling cabbages and got to an internet cafe by 2pm. We crunched some numbers online using Google Spreadsheet and we generated this spreadsheet. There was actually a chat window right beside the spreadsheet so we could exchange notes as we were building up the spreadsheet."

There's way too little information on that blog to understand the spreadsheet in depth (or the author), but the story is fun.

Site:thinklab.com.ph
Page/Post:Online Health Management Consultancy
Spreadsheet:Sample Health Micro insurance

Friday, January 4, 2008

Logging your Biking and Commuting Miles

Noah from the Commute by Bike blog (and his own KC Bike Commuting blog) has posted a very useful Bike Log spreadsheet which he plans to use to track all his biking miles in 2008. It's clear that this spreadsheet is useful, as he had a whole year of experience using his 2007 spreadsheet to learn what needed to change - so the 2008 version is sure to be a hit. As he says in his comment reply to other readers (who are also suggesting he check out bikejournal.com and other specific sites), "Google Spreadsheets lets you update from anywhere as well as collaborating with others, including revision control. It would be trivial to keep an online team spreadsheet for all of the bike commuters you know in town, or anything of the sort".

Site:Commute By Bike blog and KC Bike Commuting blog
Page/Post:Keep Track of your Riding
Spreadsheet #1:2007 Bike Log Spreadsheet (this one is fully loaded with 2007 data)
Spreadsheet #2:2008 Bike Log Spreadsheet (this one is improved, but almost empty, as he has just begun to use it in 2008)
Get Your Own Blank Copy by Clicking Here (note, each click on this link will give you another copy in your google docs list)

Note: That "get your own copy" link above is a google spreadsheet version of the excel file posted by Noah on the Commute by Bike blog - which I've imported to give people more direct access. I only made one change to that file: I added a link back to the author's blog within the summary sheet. You can see a preview of it here: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pO3Ze62OAU2HnHswCF-NCDw&hl=en