Week #5: Foiled "Mermaid Mania" Rollyo Search Roll

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Rollyo is an appealing tool for collecting websites. It was fun to browse other people's search rolls. By doing so, I stumbled across a list of online guitar tabulature sites, which will come in handy when I start playing my acoustic on a regular basis.

What could I create a search roll about? After pondering briefly, I decided to do one on mermaids. Nobody else on Rollyo had a search roll about mermaids yet. And so "Mermaid Mania" was born, and I began scouring the internet for suitable list material.

Unfortunately, Rollyo has some flaws. While compiling my search roll URL list, I came up against the first really annoying thing: Rollyo only takes Top Level Domain Names. Which is great if you're putting together a list of, say, shopping websites, or bookseller websites, or personal finance websites, but NOT so great if you're putting together a compilation of websites about the more arcane topic of mermaids. Most of the sites I found with mermaid-related content tended to have it buried well below the Top Level Domain Name.

For instance, deadprogrammer.com has a nifty article about the 15th century origin of the Starbucks mermaid logo. Unfortunately, since Rollyo only takes Top Level Domain Names (and strips out all additional typage), anyone who actually tried to access the page I selected would arrive at the main page only. The Dead Programmer main page has no obvious link to the Starbucks article. The biega.com site had a page on the Syrena, the mermaid mascot of Warsaw, Poland. But alas, said page was a few levels down within biega.com.

As a last resort, I tried running the lengthy URLs through TinyURL.com. This was another dead end. Since Rollyo only takes Top Level Domain Names, anything put into TinyURL would still be one level below Rollyo's requirements.

Final Thoughts: Interesting tool, but only useful for standard topics. More arcane subject areas--the kind usually added as an afterthought, or an addition, to websites--don't lend themselves to be listed in a search roll. How sad! If Rollyo is going to be used by libraries, the programming that limits the URLs to Top Level only will need to be tweaked.

Second annoying thing about Rollyo: spammers creep around in here just like they do everywhere else. While looking under the list of newly-added search rolls, I couldn't help noticing 3 or 4 (all posted by the same person) about Natural Minerals Make-up. Hurray. So I can't put up a search roll about mermaids, but some idiot can post spam lists about cosmetics.

By the way, if you'd like to check out the links I compiled for my Mermaid Mania Rollyo, here they are:

History of the Starbucks Mermaid Logo
www.deadprogrammer.com/?p=1684

Little Mermaid Statue in Copenhagen, Denmark:
www.copenhagenpictures.dk/mermaid.html

Mermaid History and Art:

www.northstargallery.com/mermaids/MermaidHistory2.htm

www.isidore-of-seville.com/mermaids

www.mermaidlexicon.com

Weeki Watchee, FL City of Live Mermaids:
www.weekiwachee.com

Analysis of Hans Christian Anderson's "Little Mermaid" fairy tale:
www.surlalunefairytales.com/littlemermaid/index.html

Coney Island Mermaid Parade:
www.coneyisland.com/mermaid.shtml

Syrena, Mermaid Mascot of Warsaw, Poland:
www.biega.com/syrena.html

Mermaid Mummies:
www.pinktentacle.com/2006/08/mermaid-mummies