Ever since my trip to Google’s Developer Day earlier this week, I can’t get enough of playing with APIs. When I read Tim’s post this morning about charts in Excel I realised that it was the perfect excuse to bang on about one I find particularly useful.

When most people need to create a graph they reach straight for Microsoft Excel, but it’s far from the only choice. Using a development API to knock together a quick line chart may sound like overkill, but it’s easy to use once you get to grips with it, and completely free.

Charts are created as images by writing a custom URL. You can then save the file and drop it in to a presentation, or just share the URL. The simple line graph above was knocked together in a few moments using Jon Winstanley’s Chart Generator which makes the whole process even simpler.

Line charts aren’t the only graph that Google provides, though; pie charts, scatter graphs, and everything you’ll find in Excel is here, as well as a few extras. World maps can be created, for instance, QR codes, barometer style charts – the list goes on, and I need to stop playing with it and get on with some work.