Google ships database porn tool

Visualize your expense forms

By Ashlee Vance in Santa Clara • Get more from this author

Posted in Applications, 19th March 2008 21:32 GMT

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If you're tired of boring old data sets that lack the pizazz of Web 2.0ocity, then Google has the API for you.

Meet the Google Visualization API, which gives developers a chance to add a graphical edge to their applications and data. The company this week dished the API out to the public hoping to "make it easier for a wide audience to make use of advanced visualization technology."

Google has been all a flutter over creating graphical representations of data ever since it acquired GapMinder last year.

The visualization code should aid developers in search of what we'll call database porn. You can check out the GapMinder site for some examples of database eroticism or pick up a pornographic widget for, say, rendering a timeline of data here.

The Google Docs team is already making use of this type of technology, adding in support for gadgets and the Visualization API to its spreadsheet software.

Paris Hilton spreadsheet, anyone? ®

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