Google is so much more than just search, as many people know, and one of their services that I’ve been playing with recently is Google Forms. There are many uses for setting up a form — you can create a survey or poll, have folks self-populate a contact list, enter all of your travel expenses — and google makes it very easy. The results are stored in a google spreadsheet, accessible from anywhere, and there is even a tool to analyze your answers.

My first public form is set up to survey people about the price of heating oil here in Maine — a concern shared by most everyone I know.  I embedded it into a page to make it easy to find, and easy to fill out. Check it out! (And if you are a Mainer who’s bought oil, fill it out, too! It’ totally anonymous.)

Maine Oil Prices

My anniversary isn’t until Friday, but FedEx came today and dropped a box inside the screen door with a bang, and, well, word to the wise: Roku doesn’t ship anonymously.  The navy blue box, with ROKU printed on every side, made it clear what my sweet husband had ordered up his wife of (almost) 5 years, and with the cover blown, I cracked into it. I’ve been craving a Roku since I first read about it, in May, as it seemed to be the perfect blend for our Netflix accounts. I always order “spelling bee movies,” (true)  and my husband loves obscure horror flicks, and we both like TV on DVD, but one can OD on watching a series as quick as possible. The Roku seemed like the perfect solution for us — we don’t have cable, we don’t have Tivo, we have a big antenna and a digital tv to get the best free reception, but that’s it. The husband was anti-Roku, being one that doesn’t ever want to “pay for TV” (the irony being that he is paid BY television, in his career) but I was very, very, pro Roku. As the services improved — Starz adding content, an SDK being released — I was wanting the box even more. Which makes for a great, easy, surefire win of an anniversary gift.

I have to say, this is the greatest thing since Netflix itself. It’s like Tivo for patient people. (And, well, cheap people.) It’s poor-man’s cable. We pay $9 a month for the minimum service that works with Roku, and have for a while, but instead of Season One, Disc One of Weeds sitting on top of the TV for, literally, months, it will now just live in the Instant queue, and we can watch when we want to — ad-free. My obscure documentaries can idle in the Instant queue, instead of literally in our house.  The quality is great (at least as good, or better, than our analog signal — and more stable than our digital one) and it connected to our wireless network with no problems.

I can’t wait to see what happens with the SDK out there. It is bound to be great.

Order your Roku here.