I’m always looking for ways to get interactive calculations into the real world. I’ve started a blog at http://betterexplained.com, as a way to share the hard-fought insights I’ve managed to stumble upon. Here are two articles that benefit from having linked or embedded calculations:

• Mental Math Shortcuts
• Understanding Big and Little Endian Byte Order

In my ideal world, every calculation in a paper or tutorial would have a footnote so readers could play with the numbers themselves. Much of my learning has come from experimenting on my own, rather than only using the stock examples listed in the textbook.

…Wow. I didn’t expect such an overwhelming response to the initial release, and I’m really happy that people are finding it useful. I want calculations to be easily created and easily shared, and from the feedback I’ve been getting I think we’re getting closer to that goal.

That said, there may be such a thing as too much sharing . My web server is no match for a simultaneous assault from various sources - I’ve done what I can to offload scripts to other sites, but the flood keeps coming! Right now it’s about 1000 users an hour and rising, and each user hits the site with multiple page views.

If you are using the widget and are experiencing any slowdown on your site, feel free to disable it or replace it with the regular permalink (just use the “save link” button). Now that the widget proof-of-concept is working correctly, I’m looking into other platforms (such as Google Gadgets) and hosting options to ensure a high quality of service. This is the initial release, and as such I’ll do my best to keep the site up as much as possible.

Thank you again for all the warm responses! It has made my day (week, month, year) to create something people are finding genuinely useful. As always, feel free to provide feedback on what you think about the site.

-Kalid

UPDATE: I contacted my web host and it turns out I had hit the max # of processes allowed in apache (20). This was bumped up, and the site should be more responsive now.

Btw, my host - rimuhosting - was awesome during this. After my email they took a look at the machine, isolated and resolved the issue, and explained the troubleshooting steps along the way. I love the teach-a-man-to-fish approach, and though I’m not an ops guy, I may be able to resolve future traffic spikes more easily.

Instacalc is my vision for a clean, simple and powerful calculator. The key features:

• Fast. Get instant answers, without waiting.
• Simple. Write formulas like “profit = revenue - expense”, not “E2 = C3 - B2″. Write “2.6 billion”, not 2600000000.
• Shareable. Every calculation can be stored as a link and sent in an email, webpage, or over IM.
• Clean. InstaCalc stays out of your face - no registration required, and ready-to-go on your first visit.
• Powerful. Set variables, use many math/programming functions, get random numbers, convert to binary or even use charts!

My goal is to make calculations easy, not recreate Excel (many websites exist for that). I don’t think that referencing cells and attaching spreadsheets is the best way to share a quick calculation. If I did, I wouldn’t have felt the need to make this tool, nor other people to use it!

Enjoy the site, and always feel free to drop me a line. Have fun!