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This is pretty neat, but it seems like an advanced version of Google Docs Spreadsheets. I wonder if they'll roll these features into that. The OSS project is ni
by zachster 16y ago
This is pretty neat, but it seems like an advanced version of Google Docs Spreadsheets. I wonder if they'll roll these features into that. The OSS project is nice for confidential data, but I think a lot of people would use a hosted version. Anyone going to set one up?
I literally just did the same exercise as demonstrated in the second video, parsing a Wiki document (the list of world religions) from Wikipedia. But it took about 30 lines of PHP.
Maybe they'll add the ability to import a web page as a data source, and export the script that does the transformations as a python script?
Okay. I'm rambling...
- nswanberg 16y agoI haven't used some of the cooler import features of Google Docs Spreadsheets, but my guess is that Refine will be better if a) you are not skilled in a language that handles text easily (I have friends who might have a need to aggregate that data but would have no clue how to begin writing a program to parse it). b) don't have a Peter Norving-like facility with algorithms: http://norvig.com/ngrams/ http://norvig.com/ngrams/ i.e. you could code the transformation given sufficient time, but Refine would be faster, both in development and, for large data sets, run time.
- thejefflarson 16y agoYou can grab data from a web api, for example, geocoding: http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/wiki/Geocoding http://code.google.com/p/google-refine/wiki/Geocoding