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Comment by scotty79 | Hacker News Reader

I think MS dropped the ball with Excel similar way as it did with IE.

Users of Excel see its great potential and its intuitive interface and use it for things that builders of this product have not anticipated.

What's wrong here is that builders do not follow users and don't try to improve their product to better fit what the users are using it for. Excel should turn into actual database many years ago.

Personally I'd like to see Excel migrate in this direction: http://dabbledb.com/demo/#play

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It's never going to happen, and you already know why: http://office.microsoft.com/access/

How many people use access over excel when it comes to basic things? I don't know why the more advanced db like things in excel, yet on the simpler spectrum of access' features aren't baked into excel in a dabbledb type manner.

I came here to ask if anyone remembered DabbleDB. When I first saw the demo I thought that thing would change the world.

Isn't that the kind of thing the OP is asking for?

I just headed over to DabbleDB's site to check it out and I see that Twitter, of all companies, has acquired it (!) They're no longer accepting new sign-ups. It looked like a totally awesome service. I can't imagine how twitter is going to use this.

The same team also run another analytics app called Trendly. And the team will be joining the analytics team on twitter. So you can see where it's going :)

I thought DabbleDB would change the world too :-D

It is not going to happen for several reasons.

One of them is that the company just got acquired by twitter.

http://blog.dabbledb.com/2010/06/140character-dabbling.html

I hope they release the code as open source...

dabbledb was a great service. I think it was still a little more technical/large dataset feeling though. It's not accepting new signups or accounts now :(. Twitter bought them more for trendly and the team.

iFreeTools Creator, which I am working on, is moving in this direction.

Interestingly, I did not start out to build a replacement for Excel, but to offer customization features for my CRM app. Removing the default CRM entities (or "tables", if you would like to call it that), provides a slate wherein you can build your own custom database apps.

Like, a bug-tracker : http://blogs.ifreetools.com/2010/03/building-simple-bug-trac...

Or, may be, a property management app : http://blogs.ifreetools.com/2010/01/build-apps-online-over-g...

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