

This basically blows the Google calculator away - rms
http://instacalc.com/

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kalid
Hey guys, this is Kalid from instacalc. Thanks for the link -- please send any
feedback/bug reports to kalid@instacalc.com and have fun playing around with
it.

I'm actually in YC this summer on another project with some friends, we'll let
you know when it's launched :)

~~~
henning
[http://my.instacalc.com/calc/92299353cf9840adbe298cad39c46b7...](http://my.instacalc.com/calc/92299353cf9840adbe298cad39c46b77)

are you aware that you're getting spammed?

why don't have rel=nofollow in place for links?

~~~
rms
go go black hat SEO

Nice catch

~~~
kalid
Thanks for the info. Yeah, I was surprised how quickly the spammers found my
little old site. Nofollow is a great suggestion. I may need to add captchas as
well.

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arhar
PFFT!!!

This silly thing couldn't even calculate this, something that Google calc does
perfectly:

[http://www.google.com/search?q=the+answer+to+life%2C+the+uni...](http://www.google.com/search?q=the+answer+to+life%2C+the+universe%2C+and+everything)

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npk
Cool.

1) You need more units! Especially physical units, erg, joule, etc.

2) The interface is too slow on my mac camino browser.

3) Play a little with Frink. In terms of calculations, frink is awesome.
However, the plotting and the shared aspect of instacalc is very cool...
perhaps you can merge the two?

~~~
kalid
Awesome, thanks for the feedback :)

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rms
And it's a great example of the type of design YC prefers. The functionality
of the site is clear at first glance.

~~~
pg
True, but we didn't have anything to do with this. They'd made instacalc
before we funded them, and their YC startup is totally unrelated.

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hugh
Very nice. But it doesn't have one of my favourite google calculator features:
built-in physical constants -- things like "speed of light", "electron mass",
"permittivity of free space", "planck's constant" and so forth.

I realize I'm in a bit of a niche here, but that's a very useful feature for
me.

~~~
kalid
Thanks for the feedback, I'll consider adding them in. Ideally I'd like to
make a plugin system where people can enter and share their crazy formulae &
constants.

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chadboyda
Great site. Very self explanatory. I like that it removes all the hassles of
creating, saving, and distributing spread sheets. Definately bookmarking this
one.

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henning
I was able to spook it, but we do tons of back of the envelope calculations at
my office all the time and I plan on making this my homepage at work.

~~~
kalid
Wow, I hope it will be useful for you! Let me know (kalid@instacalc.com) if
there's any features you need.

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vlad
Awesome! I think there's a bug--can anyone else confirm that the bar chart
doesn't seem to work in shared spreadsheets:
[http://my.instacalc.com/calc/1c58eb08760043bfb67924cb5fa1684...](http://my.instacalc.com/calc/1c58eb08760043bfb67924cb5fa1684d)

~~~
kalid
Um, it's a "feature" :)

I purposefully disabled charts on the embedded versions to save bandwidth
(about 100kb of javascript), but I plan to add it in.

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mynameishere
If you can't tell me how many pints are in a cubic acre, then you can't tell
me anything:

[http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pints+per++cubic+ac...](http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=pints+per++cubic+acre&btnG=Search)

~~~
kalid
[http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=MSBwaW50IGluIGN1YmljIGNtfDEgc...](http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=MSBwaW50IGluIGN1YmljIGNtfDEgcGludCBpbiBjdWJpYyBtfDEgcGludCBpbiBjdWJpYyByb2RzfDEgcGludCBpbiBjdWJpYyBubXwxIHBpbnQgaW4gY3ViaWMga25vdHx8&s=sssssss&v=0.9)

1 pint in cubic cm, sure. Cubic meters, no problem. Cubic knots, even cubic
rods, anything you want.

But cubic acres? Now that's just getting crazy. Acres measure area, so not
exactly sure what a "cubic acre" would be. I suppose it could be a cube with 1
acre each side, but man, that's pushing it :).

------
weber
if you become a millionaire with this calculator i will cut my wrists :)

~~~
kalid
Ah, c'mon, it provides some value right? What did you do when you saw this?
<http://milliondollarhomepage.com/> =)

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eusman
i tried: R7: 384 kbit/sec in GB/month then using the result from R7: R7/1mb
the calculation will not use the quantity type of R7 which is GB, but only the
number. trying to use: R7 in GB will again not use the right quantity for my
result..

~~~
kalid
Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, right now I'm not tracking the type of each
result, just the final result. This is a planned feature.

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gojomo
Nice site, though it doesn't work on some of the bandwidth calculations I
often do via Google calculator. (eg: "(1TB / 100Mbps) in days")

For the curious, there's a GPL project, 'qalculate', which could be used as
the basis for similar calculator services.

~~~
kalid
Thanks -- you can actually do the calculation above like this:

[http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=KDFUQi8xTUIpIHNlY29uZHMgaW4gZ...](http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=KDFUQi8xTUIpIHNlY29uZHMgaW4gZGF5c3x8fHx8fA&s=sssssss&v=0.9)

I'm not tracking the implicit unit conversion (1TB/ 100 Mbps)... yet :)

~~~
gojomo
Your answer doesn't match Google's, so I think your reformulation is wrong.

~~~
DougBTX
It seems like it isn't case sensitive, so can't tell the difference between
1MB and 1Mb (1MB = 8Mb)

~~~
kalid
Yeah, I decided to make it case insensitive to avoid confusion. It seems most
non-techies aren't aware of the GB vs gb distinction (and not to mention the
uber-geeks who insist on gibi and kibi and all that :) )

If you want gigabits, you can explicitly write "gbit":

[http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=MSBnYiBpbiBtYml0fDEgZ2IgaW4gb...](http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=MSBnYiBpbiBtYml0fDEgZ2IgaW4gbWJ8fHx8fA&s=sssssss&v=0.9)

Thanks again for all the feedback guys!

