But that’s okay – our survey software is now iPhone & iPad-enabled! At any account level, you can now optimize your surveys for iPhone, iPad, and other mobile platforms.

Enterprise and Dedicated accounts also have the ability to auto-detect mobile browsers and serve up an appropriate mobile version of an existing survey. This means you can show different versions of the same survey to someone on a desktop and someone on an iPad or iPhone.

Lastly, you can manage your online surveys from your iPad or iPhone. Our site is optimized for mobile browsers, so whether you’re using an iPad, iPhone, or something else, you can still get realtime updates on the go.

Creating and managing iPhone and iPad surveys is now easier than ever. Grab your iPad and give it a try!

We saw a nice spike in traffic the other day when CNET covered iPoll in their iPhone Apps section. This was a nice surprise, because we hadn’t seen iPoll covered since we released it back in July during the debut of the iPhone. iPoll is our free, quick polling service. You can ask your friends where to go to dinner, take a vote during a meeting, or even ask the world their opinion on a question.

Oh and don’t forget you don’t even need an iPhone! You can use iPoll with any web browser and a wide variety of web enabled phones. Give iPoll a try.

But surveys are also a critical component of decision-making for companies looking to make a profit. They provide customer, prospect and employee information crucial for keeping businesses running. So, knowing whether you’re conducting a survey for fun or profit before you run the survey can greatly affect how you conduct your survey.

Most “fun” surveys do not need to follow accepted practices for successful surveys, and the time and expense to create an accurate survey is not warranted. In fact, the entertainment factor is often higher for a biased survey.

For example, years ago advice columnist Dear Abby ran a poll asking parents, “If you had it to do all over again, would you have children?” She received more than 10,000 responses, and 75% of the respondents said they would not have children if they could start over. The ensuing uproar (how could parents say such a thing?!) led to the commission of a more “scientific” survey using accepted practices. The results of that study showed that 95% of parents would have children if they had it to do over again.

Political surveys, on the other hand, tend to want to be more accurate, because their entertainment value is closely tied to the accuracy of the surveys. The Gallup organization has made a good business out of performing rigorous survey methods in their work.

Compare two recent excerpts from USA TODAY:

“According to the latest AP-Ipsos national poll: Among Republicans surveyed, 23% ‘can’t or won’t say which candidate they would back,’ from their party’s contenders, ‘a jump from the 14% who took a pass in June.’ Rudy Giuliani leads the list of those who are chosen, with 21% support.”

“The AP-Ipsos results aren’t backed up by the latest numbers from the Gallup Poll. Today, Gallup’s Lydia Saad reports that 10% of Republicans responded with ‘none’ or ‘no opinion’ when Gallup asked which of the GOP candidates they support. In Gallup’s latest survey, Giuliani leads among Republicans with 30%.”

So, which poll is correct? There is no way to truly know unless we look at the methods used. As we learned in the Dear Abby example, the methods affect the results!

So, are your surveys for fun or profit? Businesses, we hope, strive for accuracy, but sometimes using accepted practices isn’t worth the time and money involved. Decide what purpose your survey will serve, and then you’ll know if you should strictly follow accepted practices. Next time I’ll cover some of these basic accepted practices for surveys that everyone should know.

But that’s okay – our survey software is now iPhone & iPad-enabled! At any account level, you can now optimize your surveys for iPhone, iPad, and other mobile platforms.

Enterprise and Dedicated accounts also have the ability to auto-detect mobile browsers and serve up an appropriate mobile version of an existing survey. This means you can show different versions of the same survey to someone on a desktop and someone on an iPad or iPhone.

Lastly, you can manage your online surveys from your iPad or iPhone. Our site is optimized for mobile browsers, so whether you’re using an iPad, iPhone, or something else, you can still get realtime updates on the go.

Creating and managing iPhone and iPad surveys is now easier than ever. Grab your iPad and give it a try!

We have had a big response to our iPoll application. There have been well over 10,000 hits, and hundreds of users have created polls in the past few days. Now we have added a social networking aspect to iPoll. You can ask the world to cast their vote on your poll, and the world in turn can promote or demote your question based on how worthy they think it is. Current and high ranking polls will float to the top of the list.

Try it out below — you’ll need Firefox, Safari, or IE 7 to use it. IE 6 users should be upgrading anyways ;-)

Yes, you can still mark polls not to be public and send them to just friends, coworkers or customers. Those uses are still fully embraced, but now you can ask a broader audience or even just burn a few minutes surfing and voting while you wait for your train.

Happy Polling!

But that’s okay – our survey software is now iPhone & iPad-enabled! At any account level, you can now optimize your surveys for iPhone, iPad, and other mobile platforms.

Enterprise and Dedicated accounts also have the ability to auto-detect mobile browsers and serve up an appropriate mobile version of an existing survey. This means you can show different versions of the same survey to someone on a desktop and someone on an iPad or iPhone.

Lastly, you can manage your online surveys from your iPad or iPhone. Our site is optimized for mobile browsers, so whether you’re using an iPad, iPhone, or something else, you can still get realtime updates on the go.

Creating and managing iPhone and iPad surveys is now easier than ever. Grab your iPad and give it a try!

Like thousands of other people across the US, the team here at SurveyGizmo got a bad case of iPhone fever last Friday. We didn’t intend on actually buying the iPhone ourselves — but it was too slick to resist during our visit to the Apple store.

To celebrate the iPhone (and convince our bookkeeper that is was a business expense), we created our own iPhone Application, called iPoll. You can use iPoll to create short one questions polls on your iPhone and send them out to your friends, co-workers and iPhone contacts. It’s totally free.

Do you have an iPhone?

You can try our app by browsing to http://ipoll.surveygizmo.com (don’t forget to bookmark it). This app is *very* lightweight — you can use it over AT&T’s network without getting old and gray waiting for page loads.

For those of you without iPhone, you can still use the application. The iPhone image below is actually a working copy. (The only difference is that the iPhone itself never displays scroll bars.)

One caveat: This was written for the iPhone — so you’ll need Firefox, Safari, or IE 7 to use it. IE 6 users should be upgrading anyways ;-)

COOL! What can I do with iPoll?

Here are some ideas!

• Build your poll on the fly. You can use an iPhone, a web browser, and quite possibly other web-enabled cell phones. You can visit this page or go to http://iPoll.SurveyGizmo.com
• Email your poll to friends, family, coworkers, customers, etc.
• Watch the will of the mob, possibly change your mind, or help make a decision

Here are some examples of what you could do with a mobile poll

• Decide where to go to lunch?
• Who will win the next presidential election
• Where should we meet for happy hour?
• What feature should we build into iPolls next?
• Who will win American Idol?
• Who should be prom queen?

Happy Polling!