The Fastest Web Form Out There
Recently Google Docs added a Forms feature to their spreadsheets. This feature allows you to generate a form that can be filled out via email or on a page hosted by Google. The submission of this form then populates the data back into your Google spreadsheet where the responses can be collated online or exported as an Excel spreadsheet.
I think I just made that sound more confusing and difficult than it is; it takes under a minute to set up, and you can see my "Ice Cream" sample form by following this link: http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=p4Wm_X_NqY4oWmEuN8g25YA.
This functionality has a lot of potential and is a great tool for creating small and simple surveys. It exists in a similar space to Microsoft's InfoPath, but is much simpler and being Google, free. Speaking for lazy developers (is there any other type?), it is certainly not a bad thing to let non-technical users create and manage these kind of forms and save the technical users' efforts for more complex tasks. Or trying to speak from the non-technical users perspective, this is great since you can accomplish these seemingly simple data collection tasks without dealing with any irritable tech folks. [1]
[1] Note: As a software consultant I am obligated to point out that we never fit into this "irritable tech folks" category :)