

Free idea: Craigslist alerts - goofygrin

I'm sure this has been written... but a (very) quick search didn't turn up anything.<p>I've been on the lookout for some stuff and wished I could get alerted when a posting was made for these items... of course I could use RSS, but that's not KISS for normal people.
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ALee
We've been thinking about this idea for a long time. For example, I'm in the
market for a platform bed (because right now my mattress is on the floor), but
I'm not going to check every day. This application would probably be similar
to EBay's "Want It Now" application, but would be more geographically based.
It's a great idea, and I think we put it on our YC application (as one of the
ideas we thought about).

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goofygrin
Ya... exactly what I was thinking... for what I need right now, I wouldn't
travel to Austin or Houston (I'm in the Dallas area), but for other things
(cars), I would want to know when a 68 corvette comes into Austin, Houston or
Dallas.

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spoonyg
This is a pretty good implementation of your idea.
<http://www.craig2mail.com/> I've used it to find items that are rarely
posted.

Edit: my bad, they got shut down by Craigslist
<http://www.craig2mail.com/craigs.html>

Aside: What is up with CL? Their policies seem very short sighted.

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gscott
Maybe a person could suggest they keep there system "pure" the way they want
it and let you setup some "enhancements" that people would pay for or would be
ad supported (by google adwords (ads on the ads, I know that sounds kind of
strange)) then share the revenue.

I believe they just don't want to lose control but at the same time they want
to keep there system "pure".

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Tichy
The problem with that kind of thing is polling the servers of Craigslist, I
suppose. Would Craigslist allow it? Suppose you have thousands of items to
poll for every day.

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goofygrin
Ya... I think they busted that one guy that was doing the CL pictures... Maybe
you could use the google cache of CL? Seems the site is indexed quite
quickly...

Not sure how to monetize it either...

