Last week Phil Bradley pointed to some new changes at the wonderful search tool, Rollyo. For those of you who have never used Rollyo from Dave Pell and team, Rollyo is a wonderful tool (perfect for educators) that allows any user to quickly create domain specific search engines by simply entering and as time moves forward by just pointing and clicking to a url. Rollyo’s ease of use is a big plus. The service is so wonderful in fact, that Yahoo came out with something similar yesterday. Again, similar but nowhere as robust as Rollyo. Btw, the underlying database that Rollyo uses is Yahoo. In an email note, Dave Pell, CEO of Rollyo, listed several of the new features.
Search any site you visit, from the same spot on your browser, without having to dig around for every site’s search page, Add sites to your Searchrolls on the fly.
+ New Blog Search
You now get fresh results from your own list of constantly updated blogs, rolled right in to your regular Rollyo results.
+ New Layout
An innovative new layout makes it easier to access Searchrolls right from the home page. You can manage which rolls show on the page in our new DASHBOARD section, where you can also pick from over 40 other starter engines, and control all other aspects of your Rollyo experience.Â
So, what’s the one and only issue of any substance with Rollyo? It’s one we’ve been mentioning since day one (literally). That is the inability to limit your domain search to a subdomain. For example, if you’re a teacher creating a roll about emergency resources, you could not limit to www.fema.gov/kids, you must use http://www.fema.gov only. If/when this issue is resolved, it will take a wonderful service and bring it into a new dimension.
BTW, to celebrate the new and improved Rollyo, we’ve created a roll (limited to 25 sites like all Rollyo collection) with a few real time databases. See this url.
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on Tuesday, August 8th, 2006 and is filed under Uncategorized.
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