Web-based AJAX applications like Writely are very cool, but I have my doubts that—at least for the time being—they can replace desktop applications. I spend far too much time writing and preparing/revising presentations on planes, and in many cases I do presentations in rooms where I have no access to the network. Hence, accessing online document creation and presentation tools just isn’t practical. (Admittedly, some of these tools let you create the presentation online, then save it in a Microsoft-compatible format on your own computer. But at that point, why not just use the Microsoft app?)

Someday, every plane will offer Net access and you’ll be able to get online anywhere, so it’s great that people are developing these tools today. And some people can take advantage of them today…but not me.

Quimble, however, is one that I can use today. It’s a poll creation service that lets you add a poll to your online content quickly and simply. You create the poll on the Quimble site, then copy a bit of code into your blog or website, like this:

Go ahead and vote in order to see how the polling feature works. In case you didn’t read it, by the way, the poll question refers to an item I posted yesterday, which you can read here.