Okay this is my new favorite thing ever,for today. Have you ever been up in a front of a crowd and wished you knew what they were thinking?  Well do I have a solution for you. 

You can create a free interactive poll and get your audience members to respond using just their cell phones.  No need to buy those goofy handheld devices, now everyone in your audience, including that guy who forgot to turn off the ringer on his cellphone, can vote on a poll and you can share the results live on screen. 

Checkout www.polleverywhere.com for all of the cool details.  Basically you create a question - either multiple choice or requiring a text answer and they publish it on the web. Then they provide either a text message code that your audience uses to vote, or a number for them to use share their text answer.  They offer a free service and more advanced paid options. You can embed the polls into your website and what's even better -you can download the poll as a PowerPoint slide and it will update with polling results. See my examples below.

Don't just guess what your audience is thinking!  Go ahead and ask. 

Sample poll created for text messaging.

Same poll using HTML code they provide.

 
www.evenanerd.com