What is the most difficult thing about Rollyo? Thinking of a topic to Roll, & finding a few good sites to fold in to the mix. So. Rugby World Cup it is then. "Golden Boots" Wilkinson is 4th from the right in the above pic, FYI, & clearly the team have all shown up for training in their pajamas... (apparently this new "grab-proof" kit is all the rage.) For a review of Rugby Shirts through the ages, see the BBC's slideshow. Anyhow....what was I doing?
Rollyo is a great idea if you make frequent visits to a small group of sites, or are only interested in authoritative content from a select number of sources, or have a particular topical focus / obsession. After creating an account you're able to create and save a "searchroll" list of up to 25 sites that you select. Use "create searchroll" on the black tab-bar at the top of the page for the purpose. I built a Rugby World Cup 2007 searchroll, then clicked over to tools > searchbox to turn my searchroll into a page widget.
So here's the Rollyo searchbox that will hit 6 of the most high-profile Rugby news websites if you choose that option in the select box. It will also allow you to search the web, and to search this site (for whatever that's worth!) This ought to make it easier to keep tabs on any further whacky changes in shirts...
So. Have set up a Bloglines account to track the blogs of my colleagues, & added some news sites there too, mostly having to do with the Rugby World Cup in France this September. England are the defending champions, but they're not at all likely to defend their title, sadly. The open against the USA on September 8th in Lens. Keep track of their performance on the IRB official World Cup site.
17-all in the 2nd period of overtime, & the ball comes back to Johnny Wilkinson, the man with the golden boot, and the rest is history... "They'll be dancing in the streets of insert hometown here tonight."
OK. Bloglines... After some wrasslin' I've been able to put my Bloglines blogroll into the sidebar of this blog. (See "My Colleagues" in the sidebar.) Putting the javascript blogroll in the sidebar was a bit tricky because the username I selected on Bloglines John-23 was not legal in the javascript inside Blogger, and so the blogroll wouldn't display. It took me a while to figure it out, but now that my username is John23, we're all set!
I'm not a huge fan of Bloglines. I prefer "river of news" style readers that deliver stories from multiple sources ordered by recency instead of clustered by source. I had a feed-crammed Kinja account for a long while. Google Reader provides a similar "stack" of stories from multiple sources with the most recent on the top. That way you can see the new goodies right away, without having to go into each site. Another great "halfway house" for learning about RSS is an e-mail subscription service like R-mail, that takes new feed entries, formats them as e-mail, and delivers them to your inbox. My feeling is that the "river" format maximises the benefits of RSS, especially if you're following a group of sites that respond to one another or a fast-breaking news story.
Anyhow. That's thing #8. Bloglines explored and accounted for.... Go England!
