

Ask HN: Please review a Craigslist mashup [alpha] - slay2k
http://www.flippity.com/alpha

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niyazpk
I have heard that they (Craigslist) do not encourage third party sites doing
mashups (or enhancing the default search facility).

See <http://www.codinghorror.com/craigslist/>

They may block your site if they find out you violate their policies.

~~~
slay2k
Yup, they're not very friendly to 3rd parties.

But Jeff pissed them off by going against a core value -- staying local. On
the flip side, sites like housingmaps.com & craiglook.com have been up for
many years.

~~~
rms
The CL terms of service are very clear. However sometimes they make exceptions
if you ask for permission and your site is not for profit.
<http://www.craigslist.org/about/terms.of.use>

_...you agree not to:...

u) use automated means, including spiders, robots, crawlers, data mining
tools, or the like to download data from the Service - unless expressly
permitted by craigslist;_

~~~
slay2k
Appreciate the quote, but I know all this. This is why a) we don't pull from
craigslist and b) i've talked to craig about it.

I chose to talk to him even though we could get the data without them knowing.

~~~
rms
How do you get the data?

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gridspy
I think that you should do an automatic initial search for new users, perhaps
using their IP as a location hint.

This is a really cute way of browsing the Craiglist data.

~~~
slay2k
Interesting. Already doing geo-IP lookup when you enter a blank `where` field.

~~~
storborg
That doesn't tell users that the `where` field is optional. It would be better
to fill in a default value from the geo-IP lookup.

------
slay2k
Thanks for all the feedback thus far.

All the bugs & suggestions have been noted, and I have several features in the
pipeline such as being notified by email when a new posting matches your
search.

My main question is this: do you see this as something that adds value, such
that I should continue working on it ?

~~~
songism
yes please. if this was continuously improved it would become my main
interface for craigslist.

try user accounts so i don't have to type in my zip code every search. and so
i can save certain searches.

and a really killer feature would be if i searched for 'desktop computer' the
category searched was automatically set to 'computers/tech'

thanks!

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DanBlake
Needs a "this site requires javascript" message. Its mostly a blank page for
noscript users.

Needs a map key telling me what the colors mean. I think they mean how many
items in that location, but I think a better use of color would be how "fresh"
the item is.

~~~
slay2k
Agreed.

PS: Scour eh ? Met your cofounder Kevin while I was @ google. UCLA LUG 4 life
;)

~~~
DanBlake
That would be the new scour.com, not the old p2p search engine.

Its not mine anymore either way- sold it to advertise.com

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seasoup
Pictures. We shop craigslist via listings with pictures. We want the pictures
up front and easy to find. The map roll over would be good, or as a thumbnail
on the listings. Other then that, it looks great and is a site I would use.

~~~
slay2k
Understood, and I'd have them already if craig decided to not exclude them
from RSS feeds. Presumably to shut down previous, more annoying offenders.
Wanna talk to him ? :)

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gcheong
It wasn't obvious to me what this sight is for until I hit the search button.

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ericd
Very nice interface!

Just curious, how do you get the locations of the ads? Is it limited in
resolution to the locale it's posted in? (I don't see any addresses listed in
a lot of them.)

~~~
slay2k
If there's a geocodable address in the optional location field, we use that.
If not, it will default to the general region it's posted in.

We're currently seeing approx 75% of listings geocoding correctly, but like
you said the resolution is often low. In order to change that, we'd need at
minimum cross-street level data from Craig. And although I've talked to him
about it, I don't think I have enough leverage to change this without a user
outcry..

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jobenjo
Well done. I've been craving this kind of tool forever. All the previous
implementations I've seen failed by having stale data. If you can solve that,
this will be a hit.

~~~
slay2k
Thanks. What is it specifically that you've been craving ?

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jaddison
Doesn't seem to work for Canadian listings. A shame. I like it a lot though.

~~~
slay2k
Tell you what, get a bunch of your friends to email me requests for a Canadian
province, and I'll start pulling it into our db :)

romy@ucla d0t edu

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guiseppecalzone
loads super fast, which is a plus. nice design. i like the radius option too.

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mtrimpe
I would really like pictures in more of the results, the most logical location
would be on the map from the onMouseOver in the result list.

Also, for some reason it took me a few minutes to figure out the what went in
the first field and where in the second instead of the other way around. Don't
know what you can do about my incompetence there though.

It would also be nice to keep the 'search for location' box around when you
get to the results. Because of my mistake I ended up in Germany and had to
click back and enter my query again.

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tkahn6
Wow this is awesome. Very intuitive and it looks great.

This is incredibly minor, but a favicon would make it look nicer.

~~~
slay2k
Thanks and done.

