Hey Joe, glad you made to the post here and hopefully some of it was helpful to you. I will be going over voting in the follow-up to this post here as well as answering some of the other questions brought up here in the comment threads.
First, Peakd.com and Ecency.com are just front-end user interfaces that interact with the Hive Blockchain to perform functions. So, if you post on Ecency or Peakd, your post is published on the blockchain and will show up on any of the front ends. I think Ecency has some incentives for using it's platform... but since i don't use Ecency i can't really speak to it and it's differences. I prefer to use Peakd because i like the usability and different built-in functions.
Secondly, voting is using your Hive Power to distribute your allocated allotment of the reward pool. The slider is there for you to split your vote into smaller increments which gives you more votes to share. You get about 10 votes at 100% per day if you want your voting power to refill by the next day. Each time you vote your voting power is diminished a little and your vote will go down in value. Once your voting power replenishes then your value will as well. Your value is proportional to your Hive Power or Staked Hive in your wallet.
This stuff gets complicated so i will go into more detail in the next post i make. Hope this helped a bit though. One thing i can say is that you can only vote on posts within the seven day payout period. If a post has already paid out you don't want to vote on that. This post here is old and paid out a while ago.
Take care and Happy New Year
OK, thanks. That makes a little more sense. I look forward to your detailed post...