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News

• The slow evolution of predictive data analytics

  A lack of data scientists in the market and increased complexity around analytics are holding organisations back from getting the answers they need from their information.
  

• ​Children’s Cancer Institute turns to data analytics in quest for a cure

  When you are trying to deliver insights that will help clinicians identify tailored treatments for children with high risk cancers, using basic spreadsheets to collate and analyse information doesn’t quite cut it.
  

• CheckCell promises to finger all-too-common Excel spreadsheet errors

  University of Massachusetts Amherst researchers have released a tool called CheckCell that's designed to spot errors in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets that could lead to big problems.

• Smartsheet, the project management tool cloaked as a spreadseet, adds visualization

  Smartsheet, whose namesake online project management app uses a spreadsheet interface, has developed a visualization tool to let its customers graph and map workgroups in their organizations for better planning and supervision.

• Quip mashes up documents and spreadsheets

  Quip is pushing ahead with its plan to turn the mobile and cloud productivity software market on its head, adding spreadsheet capabilities to its namesake app, which until now had been limited to documents.

• Google breaks out Docs, Sheets from Drive mobile app

  Google is releasing separate mobile apps for its Docs, Sheets and Slides apps, breaking them out from the Google Drive storage service where they used to reside.

• Google relaxes access controls to Apps documents

  Adding convenience possibly at the expense of security, Google will now let people without a Google Account view documents stored in its Apps cloud suite.

• Startup Colabo gives marketers self-service analytics

  A startup called Colabo has developed a set of analytics tools that it says marketers can use to research trends, brand awareness and other subjects without the need to involve IT departments.

• Treasury CIO’s big data odyssey

  The Department of Treasury’s CIO, Peter Alexander, has likened the Treasury’s journey of utilising big data technology to classical Greek poet Homer’s epic poem The Odyssey.

• Forrester: Enterprise social software to become a $6.4 billion market in 2016

  Enterprise social collaboration software, which offer Facebook and Twitter-like capabilities adapted for workplaces, will grow strongly in the coming years, eclipsing demand for more traditional communications and collaboration products, according to a new study from Forrester Research.

• Use Microsoft Excel for (nearly) everything

  Microsoft Excel spreadsheets hold more than a million rows of data and automate number crunching, but they can do so much more. Excel's simple interface lends itself to uses well beyond those that its designers ever imagined.

• Why some companies are ditching their spreadsheets

  Until a few years ago, Thule Group's North American division would have been considered a "classic spreadsheet-driven" company, according to Vice President of Finance Mark Cohen.

• Four questions for Dan Bricklin, VisiCalc inventor

  Dan Bricklin first came up with the idea of an electronic spreadsheet while he was at Harvard Business School in 1978. He later joined forces with Bob Frankston and Dan Fylstra to publish the now-legendary VisiCalc in 1979. Bricklin, currently president of software developer Software Garden Inc., recently spoke with Computerworld about the intent of VisiCalc and how the spreadsheet has evolved.

• Microsoft debuts data visualization tool

  Microsoft has released a controller for its Silverlight multimedia software that can present dynamic visual summaries of large data sets in Web browsers.

• Startup pushes Hadoop via spreadsheet

  A startup called Datameer is offering a simpler way for business analysts to use Hadoop, the open-source framework for large-scale data processing on clusters of commodity hardware.