Instacalc offers all the right numbers

Another nifty Web tool is Instacalc, an online measure converter and calculator.

It’s impressive and simple. The page, at http://instacalc.com, gives you open lines into which you plug mathematical queries.

Put in “77000 feet in meters” and instantly the answer appears on the right.

Calculate numbers quickly. Type in “332*33312” and the answer — 11,059,584 — arrives just like that. Use words as well: “3 billion*4.1 billion” works as well.

It converts currencies, handles volume conversions and even makes charts. Care to embed (build in) the same instant calculator on your site? You can do that by grabbing the embedded code, with no restrictions.

Hats off to the site creator, Princeton grad Kalid Azad, for his smart use of Web-scripting tools.We’ve kept track of various sites that take advantage of the open source online encyclopedia Wikipedia provides.

Wikiscanner, for one, reveals the companies or organizations whose workers made changes in Wikipedia’s articles.

Here’s another variation: Wikipediavision (at http://www.lkozma.net/wpv/ index.html) allows you to watch, almost in real time, anonymous English-language edits or additions occurring in the popular Wikipedia database.

It provides a Google world map and a display that includes occasional pop-up balloons on the map, indicating someone at that time and place has made a change in a Wikipedia article.

The map only tracks anonymous edits.

Wikipediavision becomes a bizarre form of Net hypnosis. While watching, you can be transfixed by the oddity and breadth of what happens inside Wikipedia, in which anyone anywhere can make changes to its vast online entries.

Every few seconds, Wikipediavision pops up a new balloon. Someone in California modifies the entry on “Platteville, Wis.” Someone in Denton, Texas is editing the entry for “Brain.”

Wikipediavision offers direct links to the entry, so you can quickly look at what was added or changed.