For those looking to take polls or collect survey data out in the field should check out this primer published on the PollDaddy blog on how to use their iOS app on the iPad to substitute the typical clipboard and paper routine. Probably one of the best features regarding the app is the ability to collect information without an internet connection. When one becomes available, the app will automatically synchronize with your Polldaddy.com account. ∞
PollDaddy – Doing Something Right
PollDaddy must be doing something right as the early results from their customer survey point towards a large majority (91%) would recommend the service to others. Survey, poll, quiz, and rating users all responded that PollDaddy was easy to use.
While the comments and results point towards PollDaddy being an excellent service, it’s the negative comments or complaints that really help out a company when offering these surveys. If you have a PollDaddy account, consider taking the survey which is still ongoing via the PollDaddy dashboard.
You Can Now Share PollDaddy Survey Reports
PollDaddy has introduced a new feature today that enables users to share the results of their survey with other people without giving complete access to their account. Survey reports are password protected and you can set exactly which parts the sharer can view. This feature is only available to Pro and Corporate account holders. More info on how to utilize this feature can be found here.
I’d like to see something like this for Woopra. Right now, the only way you can share statistics with someone is if they have a registered account with Woopra.com and you give that account access to see your stats. Instead, I’d like to create a private URL that expires in a given amount of time to someone interested in detailed stats. Something like what PollDaddy has introduced would be a good time saver and not require the person I want to share stats with to have an account with Woopra.com
PollDaddy Gets A Facelift
PollDaddy, the polling service acquired by Automattic on October 15th, 2008 has revamped their entire site. The new design features a rich red color with swirls and all sorts of nice eye candy. The overall design is more in tune with the logo. Even the back-end of the website has received a face lift. The only problem I encountered with the new design is that the navigation menu is not where it should be in Internet Explorer 8.
While the design touched up the asthetics, the focus was more on usability and it shows as the back-end of the website is much easier to navigate. Props to Kevin Conboy on a job well done.
WPWeekly Episode 69 – Grava what
In this episode, David Peralty and a few others join me to talk about the news of the week. Most of the news stories deal with Automattic owned services such as IntenseDebate and Polldaddy rather than WordPress. One of the discussion points focused on why Gravatar has not yet made it mainstream. While the audio quality is not so great in this episode, I hope you’ll be able to listen through it for this particular conversation.
Ad Copy:
This episode of WordPress Weekly is sponsored by WebDevStudios.com. WebDevStudios would like to announce the launch of their new project, WPClassroom.com! WPClassroom.com is dedicated to providing high quality professional WordPress training using the most powerful online training software powered by Cisco WebEx. Reserve your seat today at WPClassroom.com! By the way, use the coupon code wptavern when sigining up and that will take off $5.00 on the first class on September 9th.
Stories Discussed:
Gravatar.com Gets A Facelift
Why isn’t Gravatar Main Stream Yet?
Open Source CMS Awards
IntenseDebate Future Features
WP E Commerce Integration With IntenseDebate
PollDaddy Style Editor
WordPress Tavern Listener Poll:
Last weeks poll question was: Do you think the Codex is the future of documentation for WordPress?
Out of a total of 45 votes, 23 of you said Yes, 20 of you said No while 2 of you wanted to know what is a Codex.
This Weeks Poll Question Is: Have You Enjoyed Your Stay At The Tavern So Far?
Picks Of The Week:
Jeff – IRCLogs.wordpress.org – Enables you to see the log file for the bbPress, BuddyPress development, WordPress development, WordPress, and WPMU IRC channels. The log file page also provides a nifty bar of options at the top where you can easily switch channel logs, view log files from the past few months, or perform a search. So if you can’t catch those WordPress developer chats on Thursdays, this is the place to go to read the log file of the meeting.
David – Widget Context Plugin – Kaspars – http://konstruktors.com/blog/
Last Weeks WordPress Trivia Question:
What is the name of the new part time employee Automattic recently hired? (by the way, John is full time)
WordPress Trivia Answer:
John Godley
This Weeks Trivia Question
In a recent interview, Matt was asked if he were to start another project, along the same lines as WordPress but had nothing to do with blogging, what would it be?
Announcements:
On Thursday August 27th at 2PM Eastern Daylight Time, we’ll be interviewing Adii of WooThemes. The special date and time is due to Adiis geographic location.
WPWeekly Meta:
Next Episode: Friday August 28th, 2009 8P.M. EST
Subscribe To WPWeekly Via Itunes: Click here to subscribe
Length Of Episode: 51 Minutes
Download The Show: WordPressWeeklyEpisode69.mp3
Listen To Episode #69:
PollDaddy Makes Digging Into Poll Data Easier
PollDaddy has now added survey filters to their polling service. These filters enable users to create more meaningful reports based on your specific needs. Here is a good example of a filter in action:
As an example, you may have a question in your survey like, “What is your gender?”. If you then created a filter on this question and specified the condition to be; all respondents that answered ‘Male’. After you enable this filter, all the reports will display just the answers given by the respondents that answered male.
Sounds like users of the service will now be able to dig into the data a bit easier based on these filters. I wonder if these filters will make Jane’s life any easier when she dives into the surveys that are published on the WordPress development blog. For more information regarding survey filters, please see this support topic on the PollDaddy forum.
Update On Automattics Services And Blogs
As I finally had a chance to sit down and add content to my feedreader last night, I thought it would be a good idea to provide an update on all the Automattic owned services and also provide a list in case anyone was wanting to know which services or blogs were Automattic owned. So without further adieu.
Akisment – Last night, a new version of Akismet was released which fixes a diagnostic error which was responsible for reporting spurious errors. The new version should already be available on your plugin management page.
blo.gs – Blo.gs which was acquired back on April 21st, 2009 by Automattic is still sitting pretty. I have no idea what will become of this site but based on what it’s capable of doing, I have to wonder if this will end up being a merged version of Ping-O-Matic and Blo.gs.
Gravatar – The Gravatar blog has been silent since March so I’m going to guess not much is happening on that front. But Gravatars are working well so at least we know the lights are on!
IntenseDebate – I don’t think I’ve ever mentioned these guys on the site but one day, I plan on writing a review about their commenting system. IntenseDebate has been busy as of late with the most recent post being published on July 10th. They have now added the ability to ban users and view deleted comments, two things which should make administrators happy.
Ping-O-Matic – Ping-O-Matic received a complete make over earlier this year but since then, not a whole lot of things happening with this service. It still works for pinging but as I’ve noticed last night, the stats page which I’ve been complaining about for awhile now is still broken. It’s been broken for over a year now. Blog posts that are there are published in the UnCategorized section and I don’t think anyone is looking over the comments box. Publish and forget seems to be the name of the game.
PollDaddy – This service has been busy as well, just like IntenseDebate. They have recently launched a brand new support page which you can find here which I think looks a lot like WordPress.com. They have also worked on various bits of the User Interface so all is well on the PollDaddy front.
WordPress For Blackberry – Although not a service, this is an Automattic backed project so I felt it necessary to include in this list. Recently, a new beta of the app for the Blackberry phone was released that now displays text encoded with some additional character sets.
WordPress Publisher Blog – An Automattic backed blog that is used to showcase big time folks who have chosen to use or move to WordPress. Raanan Bar-Cohen does a good job keeping the site updated and it’s through here that I find out about celebrities or other big names choosing to go with WordPress. The most recent post deals with the Telegraph.co.uk moving to the WordPress MU platform.
WordPress.com – WordPress.com is doing just fine, no need to go into details there.
iPhone App For WordPress – Since I own one of these devices, I now have a reason to read Apple related content. I use the app on my iPhone 3GS and it works flawlessly for me. Recently, the team announced that Version 1.3 went live.
WordPress.TV – WordPress.TV is kicking. I’m sure Michael Pick has quite the backlog of video content to go through along with his partner who was hired back in April or May. WordCampTV is also doing well which is a subsection of the site.
Automattic – I don’t know of anything new taking place at WordPress headquarters but I did notice that the job for Theme Czar was still open or at least, they are still taking applications for the position.
Some Things Omitted
While bbPress, WordPress.org and BuddyPress all show up on the page showcasing the projects Automattic is involved with, I decided not to group them in with this post and keep them separate for the sake of confusion. However, Sam Bauers of bbPress and Andy Peatling of BuddyPress are employed by Automattic and we all know a few people from Automattic who work with the WordPress.org software.
If I missed any services or blogs, point them out to me in the comments as I’d like to create a sticky thread in the forum so I can have them all in a list format.