Survey of information about a vote

1 . A computer based method for automatically managing votes, comprising the steps of:

collecting the votes of persons about a given subject;

collecting time information;

combining the results of the votes with the time information; and

displaying in real-time the vote results to a target person acting on the given subject.

2 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising the steps of:

collecting information about at least one environmental parameter of the voting persons, said parameter being different from the subject of the vote; and

combining the results of the parameter information with the results of the vote.

3 . The method of claim 2 , further comprising the steps of:

determining a window of acceptable values of the environmental parameter; and

indicating and/or not taking into account the votes occurring when the current value of the environmental parameter is out of said window.

4 . The method of claim 1 , wherein the subject of the vote is the satisfaction of a current event or service.

5 . The method of claim 1 , comprising several voting sessions of limited duration.

6 . The method of any of claims 1 to 5 , applied to survey customer satisfaction votes in a shop, a mall or similar.

7 . The method of any of claims 1 to 5 , applied to survey a satisfaction vote of an audience during a presentation.

8 . A computer based system for automatically monaying votes comprising:

voting devices ( 10 , 10 ′, 50 ) to acquire votes about a given subject;

a central control device ( 20 ) to collect votes sent by the voting devices;

means to combine the results of the votes with a time information; and

means to display in real-time the vote results to a target person acting on said subject.

9 . The system of claim 8 , further comprising at least one environmental parameter sensor ( 40 ), the results of which are collected by the central control system ( 20 ), said parameter being different from the subject of the vote.

10 . The system of claim 8 or 9 , wherein the connections between the voting devices ( 10 , 10 ′, 50 ) and the central control device ( 20 ) are wireless connections.

11 . The system of any of claims 8 to 10 , wherein the voting devices are handset devices ( 10 ).

12 . The system of any of claims 8 to 10 , wherein the voting devices are resident devices ( 10 ′).