Web charts from live data

You can use web services such as Google charts or the less well-known editgrid.com.

Examples are in a blog on SDN page ranking "blog on blog"

Loading Data 

Let's say you have data in rows and columns, for example:

Get an account on www.editgrid.com.  Currently [March 2008], there is no charge for single editor pages, with unlimited linking allowed.  Who knows if this will continue in the future?, but the idea here is how to use such services, not to plug any particular supplier.

Create a workspace.  The tool set is similar to Excel, Openoffice.org, or a family tree of spreadsheet tools.  Rows, columns, cut, paste, you know the drill.  Keep your eye on the traffic lights at the bottom left of the page that show you your data are being saved online.  Cool!

Also check out the "users" line near the bottom with the little cartoon dialog icon.  Clicking on that gets you a chat window if anyone happens to be viewing your page.  Double plus cool!  Only part of the tools are visible in the 600x400 screen shot #1 below.

Graphing data 

Image #2 below shows the steps to create a chart.  Select "Insert" and then "Chart". 

In Image #3, I selected an X-Y scatter plot, but you can see others available. 

Publishing data

After you are happy with the data, or as happy as you can be working with numbers, right click to get choices shown in image #4.

We want this object's permalink.

The last image (#5) shows the pop up window containing the image link.  This can be copied to the clipboard, and pasted to your blog or wiki page, like this:

http://www.editgrid.com/export/sheetobject/7559035.png

How to create a thumbnail of this image, or embed it directly, are outside the scope of this wiki page. 

Illustrations

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