It is few and far between that I find something on the internet that I genuinely think is a cool idea. Something that once you discover you immediately form an attachment to and wonder how you ever lived without it. Well I was trolling the net today and stumbled upon a very interesting and cool web application called Instacalc developed by Kalid Azad, who is a math guru and all around cool guy.
“What is Instacalc and why should I care?” you might ask. Well, imagine a calculator that spoke English and allowed you to formulate equations in a fluent and intuitive way. A calculator that understands the notion of currency and time and volume. A calculator that allows you to easily project your results into the form of a piechart or a bar graph. Sound awesome? If so then you’re going to love Instacalc.
Kalid has developed a ridiculously sophisticated calculation engine that is all JavaScript driven and responds immediately as you type. The way it works is you simply start typing your equation into a textbox and it evaluates it on the fly. You can do simple stuff like basic math like so:
You might say that there isn’t anything really special going on here, and you’d be right, but the beautiful thing about this is that typing this equation was substantially smoother in Instacalc than it would have been using a calculator software (like Windows calc) or an actual calculator.
The real power of Instacalc begins to show when you start to get creative with it. Suppose I’d like to know how long it would take to download a 30gb file if I had a 15mbps connection. Sure you could easily calculate that that out if you knew the proper formula, but why bother when I could do this?…
If you don’t think that is just cool as hell then either you don’t have a pulse or you can’t appreciate anything of value.
Now what if I got wrapped up with the wrong crowd, had a few too many drinks, one thing led to another and next thing you know I’m in deep with the Yakuza for 500,000 yen. How in the world am I going to pay that when I don’t even know how many dollars that equates to?
Hmm, well $4,300 sounds a lot better than 500,000. Thanks Instacalc!
Suppose I was offered a hundred bucks to chug down 1,000 teaspoons of vinegar oil. That doesn’t sound too bad. I mean, a spoonful is pretty small right? Well, maybe I should consult Instacalc about this first…
Umm….Yeah so I might as well sign my deathwish and spare us all the trouble because 5 liters of vinegar oil would wreck me pretty horribly. Luckily Instacalc had my back on this one.
Now I’m being offered a chance to participate in one of those charity runs that are for a good cause. My sponsor tells me all I have to do is run a million inches, which to be frank sounds like childs play 
I mean a million inches is nothing right? I’ve probably eaten that much in Subway sandwiches in the last month. Well, the day of the race comes and I decide to figure out exactly what my casual jog for charity will entail…
You know that feeling you get in your stomach when you know you’ve made a very poor decision but yet know there is no way out?…
At this point you may be asking yourself “Is there anything Instacalc can’t do?” and sadly the answer is yes. I attempted the following equation earlier today to no avail:
Why was I trying to figure out what my waist size would be in ladies jeans? That’s between me and Instacalc 
Seriously though, this is a really great and fun app to use/mess around with. It rivals Google’s calculator in terms of functionality, but I think is much nicer to use. The only thing that initially stood out to me that Google has over Instacalc is it’s ability to translate currency by country insead of currency name. For instance, with Google I could say “5 British pounds in South Korean money” without knowing what the name of South Korean currency is actually called. With Instacalc you have to know the currency name/abbreviation.
Anyways, this is just a smidgen of the features offered by Instacalc. I haven’t even gotten into variables and charting. Hopefully this gives you all enough incentive to go out and give it a shot.
