Spreadsheet Based Blog

Would blogging be different/better if we (the blogging community) used something like Google Spreadsheets technology for all our conversations? Each paragraph would be a cell (that can be formatted by the same tools that a Google document would … mini cell-documents). We'd quote/reference by cells rather than site/page/article/comment (as controlled by others). We'd store/host/index our own cells. Gmail would just be a certain ordering of my generated content or polled content of cells. The interface would be something like merging Gmail and Google's Docs & Spreadsheets, Reader, Calendar, Base, Video, and Page Creator into a single content creaton/presentation metaphor, single interface presence, and online communication medium.

We could group cells into our own conversation, something like our own wiki. Reuse the parts we repeat or reference frequently by reference pointer (like a spreadsheet’s “=A2” formula) rather than copy/paste. Tags would be cell properties (easier to tag implicitly by cell proximity to each other). Copyrights/Commons would be cell properties. "Author" would be a cell property. Cell properties would be replicated as part of the reference pointer as well. Security and encryption would be at the cell level as well. A cell could contain more media that just text such as a video clip, sound recorder/player, or a code snippet as an executable function.

Everyone could take advantage of the hide/reveal column/rows as a sort of ad hoc tree/hierarchy to improve navigation. Editing our own authored cells could replicate the fix throughout the blogsphere since the copies of text/content are by reference pointer. Each cell could keep its own change history like a wiki (possibly by both the author’s host server and any content consuming site’s host server). Since my host contains the initial cell’s

We could search the content we reference as easily as we search our own content since it would appear in one continuous UI domain (ala Jef Raskin's "The Humane Interface"). And built-in spell check, grammar check too please (domain sensitive by context per academic, business, cultural, informal, etc.).

Formulas in our spreadsheets would consolidate (from 3rd parties services/feeds) our interests into easy to reference/reach cells in our other hosted spreadsheets. 3rd party apps would link to cells or cell groups in our spreadsheet. Since it’s referenced by cell, it’s easier to see who is referencing back to me, and specifically, what parts I said were most interesting.

We could leverage the "functional programming" type community application development that spreadsheets expose. Cells could map to programmers’ classes. When programming, a cell’s properties could appear in adjacent cells that could be hidden by column/row hiding.

I tried to describe something like this on the Twiki wiki some years ago.

Such a system could even be a replacement for email I suspect. On such a platform Gmail would just be a certain ordering of my generated content or polled content of cells. With such a system you’d be blogging to an individual, with all the identification that comes with knowing where the content is hosted, which could reduce spam.

SqSquare is something of a graphical 2D version of the previous concept, since an internet aware programming IDE is built-in with every client.

http://sqsq.jp/SqSquare/7