FormSpring Blog » Fun Forms

Meet Us at SXSW at the SXSBW Happy Hour

chris — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 14:00:22 +0000

This is our first time heading down to SXSW and we couldn’t be more excited. Not only are we going to get to attend some great sessions at the Interactive portion of SXSW, we are also going to be hosting a great party with some of the most awesome web companies in our space.

We have written about The Small Business Web before, but for a quick refresh, The Small Business Web is a collection of web companies who are dedicated to helping small businesses grow by providing great products, great customer service, and most importantly, integration across web applications through the use of open API’s.

We spent time brainstorming ways that we could connect with many of the small businesses who will be attending SXSW and after much discussion we decided to throw you all a great big party! Why not celebrate our customers and get a chance to meet you face to face in a fun environment? If you are attending SXSW and want to meet us or some of the other awesome web companies (many of our third party integration partners will be attending) simply RSVP for the event here.

Here are the particulars:

When: Saturday March 13th 4-7 PM

Where: Pure Volume House, 504 Trinity

How to Attend: To confirm attendance numbers it is required that you please RSVP

If this is your first time attending let us know in the comments what you are excited for. If you are a veteran of SXSW give us newbies your best tips and tricks to survive the fun that is SXSW!Recent Posts:

Using FormSpring to Power A LOL Blog

ryan — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:51:15 +0000

I know most of our customers aren’t going to run out and throw up a funny image (LOL) blog, but hopefully you can still come away from this post with an idea or two for your own blog or business. Want to host a contest where users have to send you an image of them using your product? You can use a FormSpring form for that. Need a simple (or complicated) contact form for your website? You can definitely use a FormSpring form for that. Want to start the next great LOLblog empire? Hey, use FormSpring forms and don’t forget to cut me in on the profits!

Surprisingly, when I check out some of the more popular LOLblogs, such as People of Wal-Mart, they’re still using the old “e-mail address on the contact page” method of letting people send them images for their website. This just doesn’t seem efficient to me. Besides the fact that making your e-mail public on a website opens you up to mountains of daily spam e-mails, submissions are likely to be lost as spam or simply to disorganization.

Funny image sites are all the rage these days and can be big money makers in addition to being entertaining time wasters (just look at the success of Cheezburger Network). All you need to launch one is some time, a free copy of Wordpress and a FormSpring form to allow users to send you images and captions.

As proof of concept, I threw up a quick blog using a newer Internet meme that didn’t already have a blog dedicated to it, the “tenso” phenomenon. Tenso is Porteguese for tense and started in Brazilian blogs and forums, but it’s starting to spread to the rest of the world. It usually consists of a four panel photo cartoon that reveals a closeup of something you might not notice in the first frame, creating an effect of surprise.

From buying the domain at GoDaddy.com to posting my first tenso image, Tenso Blog took me about an hour to get up and running. Besides Wordpress, the site is powered by two FormSpring forms. One is a basic contact form and one is an image upload form. Duplicating this concept and these forms, I could have a whole network of funny image blogs up in a few days.

Disclaimer: Tenso Blog is not affiliated with FormSpring in any way, it’s just a personal hobby project of mine. The views reflected on the site are not those of FormSpring LLC.Recent Posts:

The Company Picnic: FormSpring Style

chris — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:42:54 +0000

Yes, you can use our form builder for all of you business needs likes surveys, order forms and much more…but hey, it’s summer time so why not think about ways to use FormSpring for some fun, like a company pitch in or barbecue? This actually builds on a post Ryan wrote about a few days ago. By making a Select List, Radio Button, or Checkbox “Unique” you can make an item from that list disappear after someone makes a selection.

We created a company pitch in form allowing people to select what they want to bring. But as is usually the case when you have an event like this you have 5 people who bring deserts and no one who brings the burgers, well…with the unique field you can avert that, now when someone picks burgers from your form it will be deleted after they submit it.

This is an easy way to manage all sort of events. From company picnics, conference registrations, special contests or promotions and much more. Test it out for yourself here.

Recent Posts:

Fun FormSpring “Hacks”

chris — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:27:17 +0000

We are constantly playing with the FormSpring form builder, so every once in a while we like to have a little fun and think of some creative uses as opposed to the standard surveys, order forms and the like.

I am a huge sports fan and came across a sports blog that had a list of bars and restaurants where someone could watch their favorite team. This was just a listing separated in alphabetical order. After thinking a bit I figured I could probably do it with a FormSpring form and make it a bit more dynamic. Below is a quick way to build a form that shows a certain set of data using Conditional Logic, and Smart Routing. The example I used is trying to find a Wing Joint in your area.

I created a select list with multiple cities to choose from.

I then created a Radio Button field where certain restaurants are available to be selected. Using Conditional Logic I made the list available dependent on the city selected. So for instance – if Indianapolis is selected than it shows BW3’s and Scotty’s Brewhouse.

Also, I changed the “Submit Button” to “Visit Your Favorite Wing Joint”. I then went to the settings page and set up some rules for after the form is submitted. Using our Smart Routing feature I set up rules to send people to an external URL (the website for the restaurant they chose) once someone clicks “Visit Your Favorite Wing Joint”. This will take the person to that website so they can get exact location information.

Now this obviously could get pretty hectic if you had a ton of cities and a ton of locations but it is a different way of using the FormSpring form builder. This type of “form” could also be used for things like multiple retail or office locations, different products listing or even if you had multiple vendor partnerships.

Have a cool FormSpring “hack”? Let us know by leaving a comment below.Recent Posts:

FormSpring and Hoops Beyond Reality, a Sure Shot!

chris — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 19:17:54 +0000

R CA TV has a proud tradition, especially here in our hometown of Indianapolis, so when we got word that the creative geniuses behind their new “Hoops Beyond Reality” campaign had integrated FormSpring forms with the promotion we were very excited.

Hoops Beyond Reality is a promotion that allows fans to upload videos of them taking their best basketball-like shot to YouTube, and submit them to win different prizes, including some awesome TV’s and a Basketball Fan’s Dream Trip which is valued at $7,000!

FormSpring is used as the registration form solution for the contest. The agency behind the promotion, Brainstorm, chose FormSpring because it allowed them to quickly add the form and not have to worry about building and maintaining a new database. Ed Illig, one of the Principals at Brainstorm, also likes the “Share Data” feature. The team’s programmer gave him the link so Ed wouldn’t have to go behind the scenes to see what was happening with registrations. The share data feature is great for instances like this because it allows multiple team members (and clients) to see the data without having them log in to your account.

Check out the new RCA promotion, and remember you have until March 29 – midnight – to submit your videos…oh, and don’t forget to fill out that registration form!Recent Posts:

Embedding Videos, Maps, Widgets and Other Content Into Forms

ryan — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 14:06:18 +0000

A powerful feature of FormSpring that many people don’t take advantage of is the ability to place HTML into sections on your forms. Now, just because you don’t know HTML, doesn’t mean you can’t use this feature. Many websites give you embed codes for videos, maps and widgets that you can place on your own site. These embed codes will work on your forms as well, if inserted correctly.

The possible uses are endless, but one likely scenario is an RSVP form that includes a map to your location. Another would be a form that includes a Youtube video and asks you to answer several questions about the video. A third possible use would be including a widget in a holiday-themed form. For example, you might want to throw a flash widget of some dancing, singing elves onto your Christmas pitch-in dinner sign-up form. Let’s walk through the steps of Youtube example.

Okay, the first step for embedding a Youtube video on your site is to go to the page for the video you want and look for the embed code found to the right of the video. Go ahead and copy and save this code.

Next, log into FormSpring and start building your form. You’ll want to add a Section wherever you’re planning on embedding your video. On your section field, you will see a button in the text editor labeled “HTML”. Click on this button and window will pop up that says “HTML Source Editor”.

Paste your video embed code from Youtube in this window and click “Update”. You won’t see your video on your form inside the form builder admin, but it will show up once you click on the Use link for your form and view the form itself.

Click here for an example of a Youtube video embedded in a form.

Now, if you want to embed anything else in your form, such as a widget or map, it works exactly the same way. You grab the embed code and paste it into a section on your form (in HTML view). Click here for a silly example of a widget embedded in a form that I created using one of the thousands of free widget s you can find at Widget Box.Recent Posts:

Winner Winner – Gas Cards Delivered!

chris — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 20:15:19 +0000

Our final Gas Card giveaway has wrapped up and we are proud to announce the winners! Tina Henderson guessed $3.63, which was the correct price of of gas on September 8th.

We also had a viral component which allowed entrants to forward a link to up to 10 friends to be entered into a second drawing for another $150 card. Angela Felts was the lucky winner of that drawing.

Thanks to everyone who entered. If you are interested in receiving emails regarding upcoming promotions and contests, contact us and we will add you to our mailing list, don’t worry, we never spam!Recent Posts:

Vote for FormSpring Hot Blogger

chris — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 21:25:32 +0000

There is an online contest going around called the Hot Blogger Calendar and one of the FormSpring crew had the honor of being nominated. Instead of just letting this slip by as the silliness that it is, we decided to try to do something good with it. FormSpring is one of four companies that is sponsoring Chris’s drive to become a “hot blogger” and is donating Ten Cents for every vote to Jane Doe Inc, through the Social Media for Social Change initiative.

Check out Chris’s personal blog and vote for Hockeyskates (his twitter profile) and help raise money for a great cause!Recent Posts:

Gas Card Giveaway Winner

chris — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:49:35 +0000

First off thank you to everyone who participated in our Free Gas Giveaway! We had tremendous participation and support! Not to mention we had a fun time making the videos!

We are proud to announce that the winner of the Gas Giveaway is…Paul Seitzinger. Paul accurately guessed the price of gas to be $3.78. We will be sending Paul a $150 Speedway gas card this week!

If you didn’t win don’t fret! Because of the overwhelming success of the first contest, and because we want to give someone else the chance to win free gas, we have created a second contest! That’s right, we are holding a second contest with another $150 Gas Card. The rules are the same. Go to www.FormSpring.com/freegas and guess what the price of gas will be on September 8th. The contest starts today, August 4th and guessing will close Midnight, September 1.

Also, Make sure to look for the ways to increase you chance of winning after you submit your entry!

Congratulations to Paul and best of luck to the rest!Recent Posts:

A Trilogy Completed

chris — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 20:39:56 +0000

As you may have read we are giving away Free Gas! Our FormSpring Free Gas Giveaway has been going great, we’ve had a lot of excitement and a ton of entries. We’ve even produced the final video in our three part series on “How to Save Money on Gas this Summer”. Check it out below and don’t forget to enter to win a free $150 (U.S) Gas Gift Card.

Recent Posts:

FormSpring Blog » Fun Forms

Meet Us at SXSW at the SXSBW Happy Hour

Other Related Posts

Using FormSpring to Power A LOL Blog

Other Related Posts

The Company Picnic: FormSpring Style

Other Related Posts

Fun FormSpring “Hacks”

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FormSpring and Hoops Beyond Reality, a Sure Shot!

Other Related Posts

Embedding Videos, Maps, Widgets and Other Content Into Forms

Other Related Posts

Winner Winner – Gas Cards Delivered!

Other Related Posts

Vote for FormSpring Hot Blogger

Other Related Posts

Gas Card Giveaway Winner

Other Related Posts

A Trilogy Completed

Other Related Posts