The IT|Redux weblog is five months old now, and it’s time for some status check. As of today, it’s ranked 5,822 on Technorati. Not exactly Boing Boing or Engadget, but better than any other blog dedicated to BPM or Office 2.0. The most popular page is the Office 2.0 Database, which has been bookmarked by 1,434 people on del.icio.us. In April, the site generated an average of 770 unique visits a day, leading to 2,074 daily pageviews. Some of this data can be tracked using online services such as Google Analytics, but not all of them provide historical records that can be plotted onto neat little charts. For the ones that don’t, I have been looking for a solution that would allow me to build such charts automatically and get them published or syndicated.

The idea is pretty simple: first, harvest data from sites such as FeedBurner or Technorati. Second, store the data into an online spreadsheet editor such as Zoho Sheet. Third, publish charts as PNG or SVG files. All three steps have their own challenges, which makes the whole project quite interesting.

First, and until recently, data harvesting was possible only by using sophisticated and expensive software, and no online solution that I know of was available. This changed with the release of Ponyfish, which allows you to build an RSS feed out of any website. Many thanks to Emily Chang for the link.

Second, populating data into an online spreadsheet automatically is not possible today, for the lack of a proper event-driven API. Something akin to a hosted message broker that you could plug RSS feeds into is required. I was expecting Adam Rifkin’s Renkoo to be something close to it, but now that the beta has shipped, I’m not so sure anymore.

Third, I need an online spreadsheet that can produce good-looking charts and publish them in a format supported by most web browsers, either PNG or SVG. Zoho Sheet does the first, but not the second, even though the good folks at AdventNet assured me that they are working on it.

Welcome to Office 2.0 Business Intelligence version 0.1!