Lessons learned from playing with polling widgets

To handle the second stage of the contest for images to represent the Carnival of Homeschooling I played around with several widgets. Here is my experience:

Snappoll - They build a nice looking poll. But when I tried to create a post using Snappoll Blogger crashed on me. It could be that I'm using an old PC, but it seemed like a bad sign. I don't like that you have to go to another web page to see the results. Here is a sample.

Toluna - This is another sharp looking poll. Toluna is trying to merge social networks and surveys. They provide a good comprehensive service. My only complaint is they won't let Janine vote in this poll. Janine and I share a DSL line which comes into a DSL modem, and then a router. My guess is Toluna confused Janine's PC with mine.

Quibblo - Quibblo also crashed my Internet Explore. I also don't like that they seem to down load special fonts. Here is a sample.

Vizu - This widget seems to provide the most options. As I was setting up this poll I was surprised by how many ways they would allow polls to be created.

PollDaddy.com - This was my favorite. It is quick and easy to set up. It has a clean design and seems to be the least intrusive. This is the widget I used for the medium and whatever voting.


In summary I was happy with all the widget, but I liked PollDaddy.com best.

All of these services have a little registration stage. It is quick. Then you can be adding polls to your blog in five to ten minutes. If you have never had a poll on your blog, give it a try.


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