BuzzDash is a site I Stumbled on recently and found to be pretty interesting. I have always enjoyed polls and quizzes, and there are many sites on the net that offer those things. While you can find lots of fun quizzes for your blog readers (or yourself) on Blogthings, BuzzDash seems to be a great resource for user polls.
BuzzDash is in beta currently, but there are lots of polls to be found. If you visit the main page, you’ll see some polls front and center for you to participate in. You don’t need an account to respond to a poll, but if you create a free account you can save polls to your page so you don’t lose them.
Each poll also has a quick link that allows you to post to your blog. However – there is a catch. If you want to do it the quick and easy way, you have to be a MySpace, Friendster, Xanga, Livejournal, Freewebs, Blogger, or Tagged user. That is because the post to blog service is provided by Gigya and that is a limitation of their system.
While WordPress folks (and others not in the list) are out of luck doing it the ‘easy way,’ there is still a way to post these polls to your blog. Right below the little box where you pick what sort of Gigya supported blog you have is a piece of text saying that they can email you the information to post to a regular webpage.
If you decide to do that and get the code emailed to you, then you’re provided with either JavaScript or Flash to embed.
Here’s an example of a working Buzz poll inserted using Javascript:
As you can see, this poll has been going for a while. What’s good about the way that BuzzDash does these polls is that you are voting along with everyone else who visits the main BuzzDash site and finds this poll, or anyone who visits another blog or site with this embedded. You get to take a peek at what a larger slice of people are thinking.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t ask your own questions! If you take a look at the bottom left of the voting widget, you can see some text that says ‘created by…’ and someones name. BuzzDash lets you create your own and post them for everyone.
Overall, I think it’s a pretty neat service. My only major criticism is that I’d like them to move away from using Gigya (or for Gigya to get with it and support a plain HTML embed as an option) because having to send code to your email is a bit clunky.
~Nicole
