latest
How to make a Google Survey
Get responses for your research — without actually meeting the participants
Whether you need to get customer feedback or brainstorm ideas for hanging out, Google Forms is a handy tool for gathering people's opinions about anything. It lets you create custom questions in minutes, including multiple-choice, short-answer, and checkbox questions, to build a survey anyone would want to complete.
Broadband internet can be downright dismal in many households in the United States — pricey speed tiers and usage quotas tend to cripple the experience. On the other hand, cellular carriers are pouring in money towards speedy 5G and smartphone use is on the rise for a variety of other reasons. All of this to say that it's no surprise the Pew Research Center has come out with its latest Mobile Technology and Home Broadband survey findings which point a doubling over 6 years in the number of U.S. adults using the internet solely on smartphones.
They say you should always start with a joke, and boy did Twitter have a real knee-slapper at the beginning of its latest blog post: "The Twitter Rules apply to everyone who uses Twitter." Haha. With the joke out of the way, Twitter explains that it has developed a new comprehensive policy on dehumanizing speech. It's also asking for feedback from all of us on the new policy.
From time to time, Spotify will ask its users about various things relating to the service. I had personally been putting off a survey asking for my thoughts on the home screen for a couple of days. However, a reader recently received a much more interesting survey question: whether a data-only mobile plan by Spotify would be something he/she would be interested in.
We all like to rant about things that we'd like to change on our phones, but there simply aren't any real opportunities to do so most of the time. But if you own a Pixel device of some sort and you're dissatisfied with some aspect of settings or the setup process, the Pixel team is collecting feedback on reddit right now.
If you've never used Google Opinion Rewards, it's an app from Google that periodically sends you surveys and rewards you with Play Store credit. Most questions are usually location-based, asking if you've been to a certain place recently and how you would rate it. But it looks like Google may be using Opinion Rewards to improve YouTube video recommendations.
OnHub is Google's attempt at a router that's easy to set up and, unlike most others, pretty enough to leave out in the open. But it could be prettier. Rather than roll out new hardware this early in the game, Google seems to be interested in producing new cases—or shells—to replace the blue one that comes with the device.
Samsung has a hit on its hands with the Galaxy S6. (That's what a complete redesign and finally giving people what they've been wanting for years will do for a brand.) So if in-country rival LG didn't have a fight on its hands before the latest round of flagships was released, it definitely does now. LG's first marketing blitz to drum up consumer interest in the upcoming G4 isn't exactly subtle, but it should be effective: they're giving it away.
It's starting to look like Google is getting back into the rhythm of regular releases after the holidays. It feels like forever since the last Play Store update began its rollout. We've got a new version for you, but this one doesn't seem to be sporting any user-facing changes, just a lot of bug fixes. However, a deep look inside reveals a lot to get excited about. Of course, if you stumble onto anything we've missed, let us know in the comments.
You would think that with the popularity of Google's search engine, Gmail, Maps, Docs, and all of the company's other web apps, it would know everything about us by now. Millions of us have Android devices in our pockets capable of transmitting our location to Google servers every second of the day. But there's one thing Google hasn't been able to pin down just yet--our opinions. It wants to know these enough to pay us (kind of) for the information. That's what the Google Opinion Rewards app is for.
Ludia, a Canadian video game developer famous for board game and game show adaptations across various platforms, recently added a second entry to their Android catalogue with Family Feud and Friends, a game that looks to bring the Family Feud experience to your mobile device with "HD graphics" and a few compelling gameplay elements made possible by the jump from TV to mobile.
Although iOS appears to currently be the platform of choice for developers, research firm Ovum suggests that Android is set to surpass it "in terms of importance to developers within the next 12 months".
A recent report from ComScore indicates that as of July 2011 82 million Americans own smartphones, with Android running on 41.8% of those devices, iOS on 27%, BlackBerry OS on 21.7%, Windows Phone on 5.7%, and Symbian on 1.9%.
Latest data from Nielsen indicates that Google's Android's OS claims the largest share of the U.S. smartphone market with a total of 39%. However, this market share is split between HTC (14%), Motorola (11%), Samsung (8%) and other Android hardware manufacturers (6%).
NielsenWire has released yet another one of their bar and pie chart-filled smartphone surveys for the US this morning, and it's just more good news for Android. Here's a quick breakdown of some of the key stats Nielsen compiled:
If you're a frequent reader, you may remember hearing about the Business Insider Smartphone Survey, which we called out for its biased title and questions. As promised, they have posted the results, and much as we expected, Android absolutely dominated.
Over the weekend, we posted about a pant-crappingly stupid (and biased) survey posted by Silicon Alley Insider called "WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER BUY AN ANDROID PHONE? Take Our Smartphone Survey And Tell Us!" A few dozen of you posted in the comments to criticize just how biased SAI was with the survey, and a large number of you followed through to take it.
Silicon Alley Insider - the Tech section of Business Insider - posted a survey this weekend under the headline "WHY WOULD ANYONE EVER BUY AN ANDROID PHONE? Take Our Smartphone Survey And Tell Us!" Eye-catching, to say the least. The survey is 12 questions, and asks what phone (OS) you use, what your next one will use, and so on... it's all fairly standard.
Sybase (owned by SAP) commissioned a survey on tablets, and the results are rather surprising. Before I dig in, however, I feel it's only fair to point out what I perceive as a flaw in the survey: they provide minimal information on the survey questions and how it was conducted. As a result, it's hard to tell whether the survey was free of bias; based on how the results are presented with bias, I'm guessing not.