Wanna know what people think?

How do you ask a question of all the world? Unless you're working for a large website like CNN or Google or a site with similar global audience and a lot of traffic, your best bet may be a site I discovered yesterday -- Ask500People. The premise of the site is that you can create an account, ask a quick question, that question is voted on by visitors, and if enough people are interested in the answer, your question will be the asked of 100 people (I know. I know -- a little false advertising by the domain name, but maybe that's 'cuz they're still in beta. Don't know). The results of votes (taken on their homepage and via widgets placed on websites of "different sizes and audiences, to reach a cross-section of the general population") are graphed and on the homepage, you can see the near-real time voting results on a Google Maps mashup.

Questions cover a broad spectrum of about the world we live in. An interesting idea I think...