AIRTABLE

I've begun experimenting with a new app called Airtable that promises good things. Here is a August 2017 review from PC News.

Airtable is a relational database tool that doubles as an online collaboration service. Before you brush it off as boring because of the word "database," take a good look at Airtable. It's highly visual and it facilitates meaningful conversation, too. Businesses might use it to manage CRM, and individuals might use it to create inventories of collections they own. Airtable is different from older database management systems because it looks like an app that anyone with an iPhone could use. And because you use Airtable to look at information differently, as you do with kanban boards, it makes the tool suitable for new, collaborative uses. Airtable is the least intimidating database management system I've seen, and it comes with an excellent array of templates to help you understand how other people use it, too. It's the database management app for teams that don't ever want to use the word "database." It still has room to grow, but Airtable is already a great service for teams who need it.

You can use it from within a browser or download an app to your computer or mobile device. The functionality seems the same in either case. I've started using it a way of coordinating the data associated with my tracking the number of days I've been alive and examining the mathematical significance of the number using both WolframAlpha and the Online Encyclopaedia of Integer Sequences (OEIS). I keep track of the days using the calendar on my laptop, examine the number and then tweet about what I've found. The tweet generally contains a link to the relevant OEIS entry as well as screenshots from OEIS or WolframAlpha (sometimes both). If the entry is particularly interesting I might post something to my Mathematics blog.

The advantage of Airtable is that I can set up a table, create a date field and use this as a calendar. I can then add various other fields including:

• a key field called number e.g. 25185 (which is my number for today)
• a multiple select field enabling me to choose from prime, two factors, three factors or four or more factors
• a name field showing the factors if the number is composite or just the number itself if it's prime
• a link field containing the URL of the associated tweet on Twitter
• a link field containing the URL of the associated OEIS entry
• a link field containing any other relevant URL
• a long text field in which information about the number can be included
• an attachment field

A screenshot is included below shows the grid view (but the calendar view just looks like a regular calendar):

The free version allows up to 1200 records per database with an unlimited number of databases. That's over three years of daily entries, following which I can simply duplicate the database, clear it of records and start afresh. What the free plan offers at the moment is shown in the attached graphic. There is a limit of 2GB of attachments per database.

So far I'm quite happy with the interface and its ease of use. One can only hope that the company doesn't change its base tier like Evernote did. It's certainly about time that relational databases were made a little more user friendly. The company has just introduced a new feature called Blocks but this isn't available to free users like myself.

Of course, I've only just started entering records but in time I'll be able to quickly search find all primes because that's a choice in my multiple select field. Similarly, I'll be able to find all semiprimes because that's another choice in my multiple select field. Additionally, I can search by date and by number. Given that the factors are listed in the factor field, I can also search by factor e.g. what are all the numbers with 23 as a factor. All this will make analysis of the data much easier. I'm sure I'll add other fields and modify the database in various ways as time goes by but I feel I'm off to an encouraging start.

UPDATE: as of 22nd March 2018, I'm still very pleased with this app. Today I added a 152 KB PDF file an attachment to my daily record. After all, I supposedly have 2Gb of storage space per base and even uploading an attachment of that size, I would only use up 54 MB of data.