Wednesday, September 10, 2008

'Forms' read as 'Surveys'.

So I had to create a survey for something today (trying to find
out what people want to do for our clubs week away).

I used PollDaddy since I'd heard they were the go-to place for polls on the internet. I like it, the interface is pretty intuitive. As I was clicking around using it I thought funny how google haven't done anything like this yet. surely it'd be a doddle, I mean they do spreadsheets online for gods sake.

A quick google (I fear the word search is going to die out from lack of use) and I discovered that google docs snuck in a new feature while I wasn't looking (either that or they are monitoring my brain activity), Forms. Forms are, as you may have guessed from the title of this post,Surveys by another name. Simply go to create a new document in google docs and you will have the option in addition to the existing
spreadsheets/presentations etc.

Its pretty close to PollDaddys basic model in terms of functionality but lacking some
of the more interesting features like branching and modifying the appearance.
Still, It does allow embedding as follows:


by the way if the above appears to you in spanish (and you don't speak spanish) apologies the locale on my google account appears to be jumping around from time to time.


It looks like an early beta ( particularily the results page), which may be why
it's been quietly introduced, I will expect it to transform into a strong competitor to goDaddy in a fairly short timescale though ( it already beats goDaddy on the number of questions for a free service , PollDaddy only allows ten.)