Jerome P. McDonough, assistant professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois, is concerned about data. Your data, the government's data, the world's data: he is so concerned about it that he and other information specialists can see a potential digital dark age where data from the present isn't being transferred to new media as quickly as it is being lost.

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People clearly want their iPhones. I was in a suburban Vodafone store yesterday and a woman pushed a pram into the store (no mean feat) and asked: "Do you have a price for the iPhone yet?" When the sales assistant said "no", she replied: "Oh well, I'm just going to keep coming in here every day until you do." Maybe she wants one to show off at mothers' group.
But how badly would she want the Internet access features? It's widely assumed that the iPhone will lead to a boom in Australians actually accessing data online, an area where we've been relative laggards. Figures out from Telsyte yesterday suggest that while there are currently just 1.5 million users of 3G mobile broadband , this number will jump to more than 3 million by 2012. It seems safe to assume that quite a few of those will be iPhones. Just how much we use them will depend on how much they cost, of course, an area where we're still sadly all in the dark, despite endless rumours.
Is data the big selling point for the iPhone for you, or is it more the overall aura of Jobs-type cool? Let us know in the comments.

Google Documents rolls out two features that make collaboration easy, even amongst friends and co-workers that don't have Google accounts. Spreadsheets now have an "Anyone can edit this document without logging in" option in their share tab, turning your document into a wiki that tracks changes in real time and can email you a summary. Also, those who dig the custom input forms can now embed them on any web page, and users who don't like your choices can submit their own answers with a new option. Great tools for those who want to collect opinions and data, but don't want to spend a lot of time setting up the web pages to do so.

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Windows/Mac/Linux (Firefox): Some browsers let you set up auto-complete information for all the Name/Address/City/Password forms you fill out on a regular basis, but often with a "do it all or don't do it" functionality. Free Firefox add-on InFormEnter is a better implementation of that automated function. The add-on automatically places small icons next to every form space, but you'll likely want to turn that off and use the right-click functionality to fill in data from any of the profiles you can fill out—nice for creating anonymous personas for sites you don't quite trust. InFormEnter is a free download, works wherever Firefox does.

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Need to find out what grub your co-workers prefer for an office potluck? Trying to find out your friends' preferences on music? For simple data-gathering, building a linked spreadsheet and database can be overkill, and plain ol' Microsoft Office has a decent set of form-creating and data-gathering tools built in. CNET's Workers' Edge blog shows you how to create a form from scratch, distribute it to those you're polling, and gather all the data in a Comma Separated Value file that's readable in most any data-management program you choose. The tools used in the guide require Office 2003 or 2007.

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As you might have seen in our comments, our readers love them some Pivot Tables, an aggregation tool that can show your spreadsheet data any way you tell it to. If you've felt left off of the data-wrangling bandwagon, the Productivity Portfolio blog has a guide walkthrough explaining the benefits and features of the tables and setting up a simple voting analysis table for an example. Better yet, the post includes a printable PDF for your do-this-when-I-get-home convenience. For more Excel 2007 knowledge, try out PP's equally helpful guide to AutoFilter.

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Getting nutrition information from labels and fact sheets is a good start to any diet plan, but getting a handle on those abstract numbers isn't always easy. Foodsel, a free food analysis web site, offers a visual take on a wide variety of store-bought and fast foods. Using the site, one can see, for instance, that a Wendy's Homestyle Chicken Fillet Sandwich has nearly the fat content of one-third of a stick of butter, can check out a circle chart of its fat, protein, and starch content, and note that it should power an hour and 10 minutes of rock climbing (the stats pictured above are for a 12-inch Pizza Hut pizza). Foods can be searched for through a basic text box, by manufacturer, and by categories of nutrients—helpful if you were looking for, say, foods high in polyunsaturated fat and protein. For more nutri-data geekery, check out aCalorieCounter and NutritionData. Thanks Raymond!

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Got data to graph but not much in the way of spreadsheet skills? Web app Track-n-Graph gives you all kinds of bar, line, and other graphs and chart templates to use or create, as well as a simple interface for putting in the data to create them. There's a number of handy templates on the site already, including mileage and health-related trackers, and you can collaborate on your data projects with others or embed the results in a web site. A free sign-up limits you to five data projects, with unlimited use available for $25 or a single-graph upgrade for $5. For more personal project data trackers, try Morale-O-Meter or weight watcher The Google 15.

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iGoogle, Google's personalised start page and gadget platform, can be a great place to store things you want to glance at on a regular basis. Google Operating System points out a number of great gadgets that can take data in simple row/column formats and display them as graphs, charts, or a wealth of other visualisation techniques. Google's own Trendalyzer gadget can create some slick-looking spheres-on-an-axis charts to help you determine growing and shrinking trends, but those who prefer more easily read forms can get pie charts, bar graphs, line trackers, and other data mapped out pretty quickly. For more DIY data plotting, check out Gina's guide to rolling your own timeline and a Google URL hack for on-the-fly charts.

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