Don't be disheartened by the lack of response. The product looks extremely impressive, but I suspect many here don't have a use for it.
I like to give feedback by thinking "if I were king of the zoo, I would do <this>". In this particular case, I have no idea what I would do, because the software is not something I need or want to use. So I don't really have any feedback to give you.
However, I can certainly imagine business folk using this tool and being very happy with it, particularly if they are already using Google Spreadsheet, so I think you've got a winner on your hands. Try asking for feedback on the JoS Business of Software forum (http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz). There are probably some potential customers there as well.
This looks very, very slick. Visualization is a difficult problem and there's a huge number of Excel / pivot table users who would be better served by your product. I work extensively with people who take reports and data subsets from our database software and then manipulate it in excel for visualization rather than calculation. I think you've got a hit.
If you're going to put your email address at the bottom of the page, there should be something more than a parking page at the domain. The first thing I always do with a new email address is check out the domain in my browser. I expect to find a site about you, your company, or your project.
I see tableau doesnt support google docs as a datasource, but still, your software seems pretty close to what they offer
the BI (business intelligence) arena have man big players Cognos, MS, SAS .... so watch out
my suggestion is you might wonna consider supporting more datasource other than google docs
most data that ppl seriously work on, is usually stored into a db, of course people do use spreadsheets sometimes as an export format for this data for adhoc querying but nevertheless you do need to support more datasources
so my suggestions would be, watch tableau software demos, add support to more datasource, make it open source and good luck .. there are so many way to go :)
Yes, I've seen tableau, I think they're awesome. However, their client application is desktop based (though they have recently started doing stuff online, see Tableau does Web 0.2: http://www.intelligententerprise.com/blog/archives/2007/11/t...).
I'm primarily targeting this at Excel pivot table/analytic users, who usually end up emailing 40MB files around to distribute the views they've built.
The idea is with Eureka, you can do it online, and easily distribute what you've built via a simple URL.
How well does this scale to big data sets (like millions of rows)? My impression was that companies who get the most value out of this type of product are very large, and deal with lots of transactions.
It scales fairly well, but my target market is all the Excel analytic users who end up emailing around their views (and end up with version issues, data issues, etc.) I have a good deal experience with large enterprise DWs (SAP BW, Cognos, etc.) It's amazing how often people end up extracting the subset of information they need, and then do their work in excel. (Usually because of performance, and IT bottlenecks).
suggestion: remove "Email us at info at conceptual-clarity dot com" at the bottom of your website. It gives your site unprofessional look. Replace it with a form.
I don't think spelling out the email address makes the site look unprofessional. And I'd much rather have an email address than a form for contacting someone (unless somehow your form provides me a nicer interface for editing a message than my email client).
The alternative is to render the email address to an image, but that makes it hard to copy and paste.
Or the alternative is get a decent spam filter. I have email addresses on public sites as actual links and with decent spam protection, its not an issue. Making users decipher your email address or work to send you an email is a barrier you don't want between yourself and getting feedback.
you make an excellent point. Most mailing lists I use have public archives and my email address is all over the web, yet I still feel the urge to obfuscate it where I can. maybe I should be less paranoid.
I like to give feedback by thinking "if I were king of the zoo, I would do <this>". In this particular case, I have no idea what I would do, because the software is not something I need or want to use. So I don't really have any feedback to give you.
However, I can certainly imagine business folk using this tool and being very happy with it, particularly if they are already using Google Spreadsheet, so I think you've got a winner on your hands. Try asking for feedback on the JoS Business of Software forum (http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz). There are probably some potential customers there as well.