Skip to Content

Need a little good news today? We've got plenty!
AOL Tech

Posts with tag polls

Filed under: Internet, Social Software

Moralize.us: if YouTube commenters ruled the world ...

Moralize.us is a site with an interesting concept: users post hypothetical scenarios, and other users vote on whether a course of action is right or wrong, according to their own personal moral codes. It's a nice theory, that we can crowdsourcing our tricky moral dilemmas. In practice, though, the responses mostly seem to hover around the level of discourse you might find in the comments on a YouTube video.

For example, someone asked "is it right or wrong to push a fat man off a bridge in front of a speeding train to stop it from killing five people?" The responses ranged from "Right: he's fat" to "Wrong: the fat man is Michael Moore." This is not exactly erudite stuff here, friends. Our recommendation: if Moralize.us is going to be more than a place for lame jokes, they should just ditch the ability to leave a justification, and just ask users to vote right or wrong. The data would probably be a lot more meaningful -- because hey, they're at zero now, and it can only get better.

Filed under: Internet, Web services, web 2.0

Polls Boutique: Free web-based polling service

Polls Boutique

Polls Boutique is a new web service that aims to answer the age-olf question: Is there room in this town for two easy to use online polling services? Because much like PollDaddy, that's exactly what Polls Boutique offers.

But unlike PollDaddy, Polls Boutique makes it easy to add multimedia to your polls. You can add images, audio, or video clips. You can write introductions to your polls and inlcude hyperlinks. And you can share your polls with others either through the Polls Boutique web site, or through a widget that you can embed on any web page. You can view the results of your poll at the Polls Boutique site, complete with some basic demographic info, since anyone who signs up for Polls Boutique needs to give up their location, gender and age. You do not necessarily need to sign up for an account to vote in polls, but you do need an account to create one.

Check out a sample Polls Boutique poll after the jump.

Read more →

Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

PollDaddy adds Twitter polling feature

PollDaddy Twitter
Looking for a quick way to conduct a poll? Online polling service PollDaddy has added a new Twitter feature that lets you ask a group of people what you should have for lunch, who you should vote for, or anything in between.

Users can set up a poll in a matter of seconds. Just visit the web site, type a short question, and select a few possible answers. You'll need to enter your Twitter login information in order to send out the poll. PollDaddy will automatically shorten the URL and send out a tweet under your name.

We're guessing that most users will either see your poll the moment you post it or they won't see it at all, so this service will be great for Twitter users with a large number of followers who need to get some information quickly. But you can also post links to your poll on a web page or pretty much anywhere else, so you could theoretically use PollDaddy's Twitter feature to gather information over time as well.

[via WebWare]

Filed under: Internet, Social Software, web 2.0

Obama most popular with tech savvy voters

As you may know, the New Hampshire primary for the US 2008 Presidential election is today. Although web 2.0 itself has not been positioned as a major campaign issue, the power of the web and social networks has played a large role in not only individual candidate campaigns, but in the debate process itself. Additionally, with his victory in the Iowa caucus, Democratic candidate Barack Obama has become the first candidate leading in Internet metrics to pull off a major victory. So this begs the question, are Obama's fans the most savvy and "connected" supporters? Well, in addition to having the most friends on MySpace and supporters on Facebook, Sen. Obama is also leading in the war of campaign widgets.

According to Widgetbox, a major distributed widget marketplace, Obama has nearly double the number of widget impressions as his nearest opponent. In fact, he has almost as many impressions as his two nearest competitors combined! These widgets are embedded on personal web pages, blogs and social networking sites. This certainly gives additional (if ancillary) credence to the idea that Obama is the most plugged-in candidate.

Widget Impressions from Widgetbox Widgets

What effect, if any will the candidates online popularity have on the polls? Keep checking the news, and DownloadSquad, to find out!

Featured Time Waster

Forumwarz - a potentially offensive time waster

I pwn UAfter spending the better part of an hour on Forumwarz I still can't decide if it's just sick or if it's kind of fun. It's a bit like a car wreck on the highway. I know I shouldn't be looking but I can't quite turn away.

It's sick, it's twisted, it's the internet on it's worst level and darn it, it's kind of fun. At least for a little while.

Forumwarz is a parody role-playing game that takes place on the internet - or at least the Forumwarz version of it. Your goal is to complete missions that are given to you through a mock up of GoogleTalk called Sentrillion.

Your first "friend" is ShallowEsophagus who begins giving you missions to pwn various forums by being a troll. Depending on the character type you are assigned at start up, you have tools like drooling on the keyboard or bashing your head on the keyboard that you can use to destroy forum threads and eventually, pwn a forum.

Future missions involve buying illegal software from the Russians, pwning more difficult forums and other internet oddness.

Completing missions gives you cash, called Flezz in game, and items that you can pawn or use in other missions. The game is NOT for those easily offended. It's crass, coarse and there are frequent f-bombs in the fake chat sessions.

This is also a game for a more mature audience as it requires you to shop at the Drugs R Fun store to get various concoctions to improve your playing, engage in certain cyber activities to get more Flezz and just generally use a more adult perspective.

If you can get past that, here are the more enjoyable and time-wasting aspects.

View more Time Wasters

Featured Galleries

Defective by Design, London: Protest Pictures
Cooking Mama: Mama Kills Animals
Android First-look: Amazon.com MP3 Store
Android First-look: Twitroid
Google Reader Android
Android Hands-On
Twine 1.0
Photoshop Express Beta
SXSWi 2008 Schwag Unboxing
SXSWi 2008 Day 1
Mozilla Birthday Cake
Palm stuff
Adobe Lightroom 1.1

 


Follow us on Twitter!

Flickr Pool

www.flickr.com

BloggingStocks Tech Coverage

More Tech Coverage

Joystiq

TUAW

BloggingStocks

Autoblog

Xbox 360 Fanboy

Engadget

WOW Insider

Switched.com

FanHouse