If you have had a wish to create a cool web-based application that makes a person's comic book collection fun to go through, then Microsoft has something that's right up your alley. This week the company launched ExcelMashup.com, a new site that lets anyone create web-based apps that use a number of Microsoft's products, including the Excel spreadsheet program.
Using ExcelMashup.com does require signing up for a free Microsoft Skydrive account, but once that's done, Microsoft says there are three easy steps to get your ExcelMashup.com web app up and running. First you upload your workbook on your Skydrive storage space; then you embed it on a web site; finally, you can use Microsoft's Excel Services JavaScript library to create mashups based on the date from the uploaded workbook.
The site has a number of examples of what can be done with the ExcelMashup.com site. One is called Destination Explorer that lets you select a region of the world, then a city or park. Finally you can select what the weather is like in your selected area or how many visitors it gets in a year. It even uses Bing Maps to show you the area in question. It's a very simple and limited app, but obviously a lot more can be done with ExcelMashup.com with more information so it'll be interesting to see if anything cool comes from the website.
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