Data for data’s sake is no good, it’s what you do with it that matters. To make it easier for everyone, not just programmers, to reuse the data on ScraperWiki, you can now use the new experimental ‘Open in Google Docs’ feature.

Clicking the link at the top right of a scraper page will load the data for that scraper straight into a new public Google Spreadsheet that you can start using straight away!

Because of the way Google Docs works, there are a few limitations: Google will only allow datasets smaller than 1MB or a maximum of 400,000 ‘cells’ of data to be uploaded.

When the ScraperWiki dataset is over these limits, a subset of the data gets uploaded and a message is displayed at the top of the spreadsheet explaining what has happened, and including a link to download the full CSV file.

We thought this was a fair compromise – better than not having the ‘Open in Google Docs’ option on large datasets at all – since it is sometimes useful to see a subset to get a feel for the data.

Please let us know what you think, and if we can improve this feature in anyway.