Software to submit entries for a contest or give-a-way?

[bbhaag]

This year I want to have a garden give a way contest at my business. I did this a couple years ago and had about 2500 customers enter the contest but each entry was on a little piece of paper that had to be manually entered in Excel. Very time consuming and expensive.

Is there a GUI type interface that I can put on a laptop in a high traffic area that would make this easier for me and my customers? Something where they can type their name, address, and email, ect on a GUI type interface and once they click submit it saves it to an Excel file. Then the entry form would pop up blank again ready for a new customer who wants to enter the contest.

I apologize in advance if this sounds confusing. I have an idea of what I want in my head but am having trouble explaining it in words. If anyone has some suggestions I would appreciate it.

 

[lxskllr]

Maybe a web entry would work. There should be a lot of tools that are close to what you want. Set it up so it only works on your internal network. Dunno the details, but that's the direction I'd look. Most things for desktop computers assume the operator has control over the program. That wouldn't be good for customer privacy.

 

[bbhaag]

A web based entry form would be ok as long as the saved data is in a useful format. Getting a network connection to the laptop might pose a challenge but I think I can do it. Do you have any suggestions as to were to look for something like this?
I'm not opposed to paying for this type of thing but obviously the cheaper the better.

 

[lxskllr]

A web based entry form would be ok as long as the saved data is in a useful format. Getting an internet connection to the laptop might pose a challenge but I think I can do it. Do you have any suggestions as were to look for something like this?
I'm not opposed to paying for this type of thing but obviously the cheaper the better.

You don't need an internet connection. Put the "webserver" on a local server, or even in a vm on the machine that's being used.

I don't know a thing about it, but I think you should be able to set it up in a weekend. You don't have to harden for security since it won't actually be online. The hard part(in my mind) is getting the data out in a format you want. Maybe someone here has experience running a web store? Certainly people manipulate customer data somehow.

What I'm imagining is a "website" people can register to through a web browser. After they complete the registration, the browser goes back to the home page. Have the browser in kiosk mode, so the only thing people have to mess with is the browser.

Edit:
Check this out, and watch the video...

http://www.drupalgardens.com/videos/210376

Edit2:
BTW, this is where I got it from. It a decent list of free web stuff that can be used...

http://libreprojects.net/#favs=owncloud,openstreetmap,jamendo,cloud9,plos

 

[EagleKeeper]

If you have MS Access; setup an entry form on the laptop.
Users enter the data in the form and it is saved in the database;

Database can be imported into Excel with no issue.

 

[lxskllr]

If you have MS Access; setup an entry form on the laptop.
Users enter the data in the form and it is saved in the database;

Database can be imported into Excel with no issue.

Can that be made so the users can't see the other entries?

 

[Kneedragger]

Here is another option. If you know your way around PHP scripts.
http://codecanyon.net/item/conteste...item&WT.seg_1=search_item&WT.z_author=vaurdan

 

[postmark]

You can do this with Google forms also to save to a drive spreadsheet

 

[EagleKeeper]

If you have MS Access; setup an entry form on the laptop.
Users enter the data in the form and it is saved in the database;

Database can be imported into Excel with no issue.

Can that be made so the users can't see the other entries?

Fields can be made (via simple code) encrypted.
As long as the app is running with the form - Full screen; the user can not see the data structure(tables) behind the form.

Kill the app and the data could be available, IF the user knew where to browse to on the disk.
However, if fields were encrypted; attempting to view the data would be worthless.

I am operating on the assumption that the laptop would be "under" your control.

If you wanted a separation of data and application; a simple front end could be setup using any quick UI code to accept the entry and write it to a database (1-2 hr effort). Doing so will allow the DB to be more protected; potentially on a locked down separate system on the same network. This requires two systems up at the same time if networking.