
How IFTTT, Mandrill, and Twilio is helping me find an apartment in SF - coloneltcb
https://andymjiang.wordpress.com/2013/06/30/how-ifttt-mandrill-and-twilio-is-helping-me-find-an-apartment-in-sf/
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danso
I'm guessing the OP had problems scraping from Heroku because Craigslist
blacklisted Heroku's servers?

In any case, parsing Craigslist apartment listings was how I practiced
Ruby...Twillo/IFTTT/Mandrill didn't exist at the time, but a straight-up
command-line scrape into CSV/Google Sheets is, IMHO, the right amount of
engineering for the situation...unless the SF rental situation differs
markedly from NYC's (pre-2008 crash), most rental situations don't require the
applicant to be the first to call. It's a seller's market, and even if the
seller wants to get out quick, they still want the best of several applicants
to choose from, and there are things that keep the process from being an
instant transaction (background checks, and the like).

But having everything in a spreadsheet, so that you can quickly compare across
categories (and whatever metrics you wanted to extract from the text), and
then create a column to mark Y/N, or 1-10 for preference, and then another
column to mark where you are in the application process...that to me was a
huge time saver than just regularly browsing Craigslist and doing copy-paste
into a Word doc.

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eldavido
Craigslist probably blacklists all of AWS, including Heroku.

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toomuchtodo
I wonder if they block Tor.

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Torgo
Yes. So does Yelp.

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thoughtpalette
Very creative solution! I love mandrills JSON API and the 12k emails on the
free tier and twilios API was a breeze to work with as well.

Do you find the auto-call feature to be a distraction sometimes? How does that
work exactly? I wouldn't want my phone to randomly start dialing a listing it
matches without myself taking a look through it first.

Edit: May want to include this is from 2013 in the title.

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toomuchtodo
> Do you find the auto-call feature to be a distraction sometimes? How does
> that work exactly? I wouldn't want my phone to randomly start dialing a
> listing it matches without myself taking a look through it first.

A cool feature would be to text you first, and if you respond with yes, then
the call is initiated.

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MrDom
_Now if there were only a way to automate the showing up, preparing the paper
work, competing against other bidders, and the remainder of the apartment
leasing process._

Task rabbit? Or one of those other personal assistant as a service sites?

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toomuchtodo
[https://www.fancyhands.com/](https://www.fancyhands.com/)

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pranade
Great work!

