Like most free polling services, ProProfs lets you create and share the polls online, but it includes features not found in every polling service that might make it the right one for you.

Features

Here’s an overview of ProProfs key features.

• Works with Google Maps: Visually shows where votes come from on a map.
• Add images: Grab pictures from flickr or your hard drive.
• Block repeat votes: No “American Idol” vote fraud here.
• Filter votes: View votes by country or city.
• Share poll with widget: Post your poll on your web site or social network page.
• Search other polls: Browse for ideas or see the results of other polls.

Creating a Poll

Fill out a short registration form for a free account and you’re on your way. You similarly start a new poll just by filling out a form. To add images or videos, just tap the “Media” item next to the items where you want them.

You can adjust your poll’s settings (for security, comments, etc.) as needed. Once done, you have your poll. You can immediately share it with social networks with just one click.

You can send the poll by email, but it doesn’t work well. The email the service sends is so generic and looks like spam that the recipient will likely ignore it:

You can customize the poll by choosing one of six color options and from three different sizes.

Viewing the Poll

Everything you need to check your poll’s progress appears in a well-organized interface with tabs. The tabs show the poll and information for sharing and embedding, poll results and poll analysis.

The whole process of signing up and sharing the poll takes less than 10 minutes. Other quick polling tools often only let you create the poll and see a graphic, nothing more. ProProfs Polls gives users the ability to create a fast poll with easy and helpful tools for doing analysis. Just don’t touch the email feature.

Which polling tools do you use?

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Like Wufoo and SurveyMonkey, Mineful provides an easy way to generate online forms and surveys. First things first: Mineful’s interface might turn off some users. It’s meant to resemble a Windows desktop. I’m not thrilled about it, either, but the last thing I want to do is throw the baby out with the bath water. So I figured I’d better check out Mineful’s function before I condemn it based on form.

One good thing about the mock-Windows look is that it makes using the app a very simple and intuitive experience. Windows work like windows, the Start menu works like the Start menu, and desktop icons work like desktop icons. With that in mind, I clicked the “Start” button in order to get, ahem, started.

I first set up a simple user experience survey using Mineful’s Survey editor, like the ones you see pretty much everywhere these days while browsing the web. You know the kind, they pop up right when you’re in the middle of shopping or reading something, and I’m fairly sure everyone with a pulse clicks, “No thanks.”

I was pleasantly surprised, and almost overwhelmed, by the variety of question options available to me. Multiple choice/single answer and multiple answer, Yes/No questions, text box, etc. I chose a Likert scale format for some questions about web site navigation. It took no time at all, and produced very nice-looking results.

Once you’ve completed your survey, you have a variety of publication options. You can physically print the thing out, though the tool is designed primarily for web use. You can also email the survey, or generate HTML for your own site. I chose a third option, which was to create a link that leads visitors to a pre-formatted version of my questionnaire hosted by Mineful, which you can go ahead and check out.

Although the Survey option seemed like a perfectly good way to go about building a client feedback form as well, I wanted to take the Form editor for a spin so that I could compare the two. Form construction features a single-page layout that might be more appropriate and efficient for use when trying to get feedback from clients. You can select either a one- or a two-column layout, and when you publish it, you can set up security on your web link if you want to require a password or login to view the HTML document. Here’s a simple example two-column client feedback form.

The free version of Mineful has some limitations. You can only have up to five surveys and five  forms active at one time, and you can only receive up to 100 responses per month. If you’re a freelancer only using it to gather client feedback, you probably don’t need much more than that.

There are also two paid options: “Personal” subscription costs $20 a month, while “Business” costs $149 per month. Both increase your feedback levels, allow for unlimited concurrent forms and surveys, and add personalization options, like adding logos and modifying the theme of your surveys and forms. The “Business” version also allows you to add more users to your account.

I’m really glad I didn’t give Mineful a pass just because of my initial impressions of its interface. Turns out it’s a fantastic tool, and one that takes a lot of the heavy lifting out of HTML-based form creation. Check it out if you’re looking for a cheap, easy way to gather feedback from customers, clients and visitors over the web.

What tools do you use for constructing feedback forms?

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• 75% of small businesses negatively impacted by the current economy
• 72% are reducing overhead costs
• 50% are cutting back on business services
• 23% getting rid of physical office space

Overall it paints a picture of small businesses heading for the lifeboats – but how much can we tell about the reliability of this picture?

Not a whole lot, as it turns out. This particular survey was performed by RingCentral, a hosted phone service for small businesses. They provide a variety of virtual PBX plans, toll free numbers, multiple extensions, faxing, and similar services. While their feature summary is impressive, the reliability of this survey is somewhat less so: it was compiled as an online survey among their customers.

It stands to reason that companies investing in a virtual PBX system are likely to self-select towards companies trying to reduce their overhead costs. This is analogous to a restaurant surveying its customers to ask if they ever eat meals outside of the house. This selection bias doesn’t say anything strong in this particular case about whether the survey results can be extrapolated to a wider class, say all small businesses in the country – but it does give a good reason to be suspicious of the results.

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The bottom-line number from this particular survey is simple: 62% of all employed American adults can be considered “networked workers” (Pew’s term) who use the internet or email at work. In fact, 27% of employed adults report that they use the internet “constantly” at work, with the heaviest internet users being government, educational, and non-profit workers, as well as professionals, managers, and executives.

A more significant finding is the extent to which this dependence on the internet is breaking down the traditional barriers between work and home. 14% of those employed adults also use the internet constantly at home> pew goes on to define a category of “Wired and Ready Workers” – the 96% of employed adults who make use of new communications technologies. Of these workers, 46% say these tools and technologies increase the demands that they work more hours, 49% say it’s harder to get away from work at home, and 22% even say they are expected to read and respond to emails when they are not at work. The inference is clear: the more you can work anywhere, the more your job is likely to demand that you do work from everywhere.

Despite this, people see benefits: 80% say they can do their job better, 73% say they share more with their co-workers, and 58% agree that they have more flexible working hours. Although it’s not explicitly listed by Pew as a benefit, it’s clear that the breakdown of the work/home barrier works both ways: 22% of workers report some online shopping at work, 33% read blogs, and 2% even write extracurricular blogs.

Overall, the Pew survey presents a picture of a nation slowly coming to grips with a wired reality. We’ve watched the clash between the busyness economy and the burst economy for quite a while; Pew’s numbers provide a snapshot of how this is playing out, regardless of how employers (and workers) might like it to end up. It seems clear that unless workers find ways to aggressively limit their work, they’ll be expected to deliver unlimited work – and will use this as as opportunity to stretch the limits of acceptable work behavior.

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Even given the factors that make those relatively soft numbers – the self-selected nature of the survey, the vagueness of what “offering telework” might mean to different people – that’s still a significant jump. From this and other surveys, it seems clear that we’re past the point where web work is something that is only the province of a few trendsetters; soon we may even be the majority. We can only hope that things like reasonable tax treatment come along with that growth.

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Who are these people? Or, more to the point, who are their companies? If you’re working for a company that doesn’t let its people use the web, you’re probably not reading this – but perhaps you’re reading at home, on your own time. If so, I’d love to hear some stories about how your company locks down web access, and why they think this is a good thing.

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The simplest bottom-line numbers: 17% of Federal employees telework on a regular basis, as do 14% of private-sector employees. There’s been a marked change in the reasons employees offer for being interested in telework as well. Compared to last year, the number of people who are motivated by lowered expenses – primarily commuting expenses – has jumped from 31% to 67%. (This data correlates well with an IBM study from earlier this year that found $4.50 per gallon gas would be the breaking point for many commuters).

There are other points of interest in the CDW report as well. I was struck by the divergence in how often people telework. At the Federal level, only 6% of teleworkers do so for five days per week; that number is 30% in the private sector. Private workers also lead at 3 and 4 days per week, while 30% of Federal teleworkers do so less than one day per week. Overall, it seems clear that telecommuting is not the all-or-nothing option that it’s sometimes portrayed as; many web workers are only enabled by the web part-time, and in a traditional office setting the rest of the time.

68% of private sector employees, and 57% of federal ones, say the would telework if they had the option. The overwhelming reason for doing so: “more flexibility” (though “high gas prices” was not far behind). As for those who would skip it, the leading concern was isolation from fellow employees, followed by not wanting to work from home and reduced productivity.

The bottom line is simple: telework is here to stay, and given the current economic picture, it continues to make gains as a mainstream option. Those of us who work on the web full-time, though, are still the exception rather than the rule, even in the teleworking ranks.

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