Two More Reasons To Use Google Spreadsheets

I just noticed that Google has announced yet another round of improvements to Google Spreadsheets. Among other items, they announced:

• The ability to get an e-mail notification anytime a sheet or document changes. This will making collaborating on a spreadsheet easier.
• The ability to embed gadgets in your spreadsheet. This appears to be really slick stuff - as you can embed highly graphical visulizations in a spreadsheet. Check out the fairly impressive list of canned gadgets you can start with. And there's an API so you can create your own. Learn more here.

Here are two examples of my latest spreadsheet usage. (a) As a quick and dirty issue tracking system and (b) to organize, prioritize and filter requirements for an upcoming project. Sure, there are more official tools for both these tasks, and one day, I might very well graduate to using them. For now, however, the speed that I could put together a spreadsheet and the organization it provides, is just invaluable.