Radical Development

Pivot From Microsoft Live Labs

I have no more invites to share. The five I had went quick

Have you heard of Pivot from Microsoft? If not you are missing out on a great mechanism of interacting with large, medium, or small amounts of data. Pivot is currently available by invitation only to a small technical audience and you can request an invite here or the first five people the leave a comment asking for an invite code I will send it out via email. Remember to leave a valid email address otherwise what is the point in asking? Again only the first five request will be honored. Once you have your invite code all you need to do is download Pivot and enter the key.

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For a few days now I have been looking closer at this product and the more I work with it the more real world applications I can see realized. What is amazing in my opinion is how easy it is to create your very own collection. A collection is comprised of two parts which is XML and images. If you do not want to work with raw XML and you have basic knowledge of Excel then you are in for a surprise. Microsoft has an Excel add-in that makes life so simple creating and maintaining collections and I love the fact I can share the Excel document with others which will allow others to add or modify content data.

Pivot Ribbon

Once you have the add-in installed it is as simple as starting a new collection and entering your data. Again simply enter your data but remember to read over the developer information for key points that you should be aware of. To demonstrate the simplicity take a look at the following screen capture.

Pivot Excel Data

It does not get much more simple than this! All the remains now is to publish your collection and share with others. In fact, I have started a collection that I intend on updating over time which you can access here. Here is how much collection plays out viewed in Pivot.

Radical Development Pivot Collection

Author: Steven Swafford

Highly motivated information technology professional with 16+ years of experience. Working as a software engineer Steven develops and maintains web based software solutions. As a skilled professional he is focused on the design and creation of software. Because communication skills are extremely important Steven continues to expand his knowledge in order to communicate clearly with all facets of business. Recently Steven has been leading efforts to standardize software development tools and technology, plans and coordinates web accessibility as applied to IT Solutions, and he is tackling application security in terms of best practices and implementation of the Security Development Life-cycle.

  • http://www.workbook.net Daniel Binau

    Looks awesome! Would love an invite :-)

  • Jais Pedersen

    That looks really cool – i look forward to play with it :)

  • http://twitter.com/NeCkEr Bruno Barreto

    HOWW looks great!!! can i have an invite ?

    Thanks in advance ;)

  • Cynthia

    I see only 3 people replied to your post, if you are still giving away the invite code may I please have one?

  • Luis Antunes

    Great Application! :)

    I'm doing my thesis in data visualization, a invite would be awesome ;)

  • http://radicaldevelopment.net Steven Swafford

    I have now sent out the five invites and have no more.