Using the Social Graph for Polls

Its amazing how a simple idea can be generated in a few hours with the right tools and know how. I wanted to do something with Node.js because, well I love javascript, and love the concepts behind Node.js, plus its the new hotness. After fiddling around with it for days (long polling server :)) I felt it was too low level for the kind of things I wanted to use it for.

Anyway I wanted to make a simple app that would take advantage of the social graph, utilizing it for other things than I like this, I like that. How about content that really matters. So I thought of the poll idea about 11pm at night...not a good time because you start to think, maybe I can do this in an hour.

After refactoring my long polling server code in Node.js I did some searching for something (don't remember what) and came across Express.js. What a nice wrapper MVC wrapper around Node.js. It looks very promising. For templating it suggested EJS as on option. So with little Node.js experience, no Express.js or EJS experience I was able to create this prototype in about 3 hours. Yeah I'm tired but thought it was cool enough to share it with the fellow hackers.

Its just a test. If it works out maybe I'll create a front page profiling the top polls. I think it would be a nice way to take advantage of the sometimes shallow social graph. In addition, it would be really nice how people really feel about topics that effect the world.

The recent poll I saw about the Lybia fiasco didn't even ask if people were against it. It just asked how you felt about Pres Obama's handling of it. Not a great poll since it didn't even ask if people were against it completely.