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Google spreadsheet redux part 2 December 4, 2006

Posted by James Webster in : google , trackback

As expected by most observers, Google announced the availability of a GData API for Google Spreadsheets.

Now, if only my financial service providers would let my data out of their roach motels in a scriptable, schedule-able and machine-readable format, I could do something interesting with it, possibly akin to Dimewise or Wesabe.

I recently learnt (via More News) that Google Spreadsheets also has some functions for integrating with Google Finance… I wonder what sort of a Rube Goldberg-esque machine for pricing options could be built between Google Spreadsheets, GData and Amazon EC2?

Comments»

1. Marc Hedlund - December 4, 2006

Hey, you can get a free Wesabe account, let us take care of getting your data for you, and then use our export feature to get the data in an XML format you can script to your heart’s content. Feel free to think of us as a data-cleaning service if that’s all you want from us. We believe that being able to get aggregate statistics out of as many people’s data as possible will help us do the best for people, so if you just want to use us as the middle element of a pipe command, go for it. You can always delete the data from our servers later if you want to.

If there are specific APIs you want to do this better, let me know as I’m designing them at the moment. I was thinking of adding a GData export in any case.

Best,
Marc Hedlund, co-founder, Wesabe

2. James Webster - December 5, 2006

Thanks for your comment Marc. I’ll definitely look at Wesabe in more detail and hopefully shoot you some API thoughts. Part of the problem I have is that the Australian banks are not being innovative in terms of giving me easy, automated access to this data in the first place. I’d love to see them just email me a machine readable statement once a month for example, or perhaps implement something along the lines of OFX 1-Way.

3. Marc Hedlund - December 5, 2006

Hi, James,

Sure, it would be great if everyone implemented OFX 1-Way, but so far at least there’s been a lot of resistence. We’re automating banks as we get usage from Wesabe members on them, and Westpac is, I believe, our most popular Australian institution after Virgin Money Credit Card. So, that makes it likely we’ll get to it soon.

Hope this helps. I saw your email to support as well, and we’ll get back to you soon on those questions.