TypoBuddy, like previously reviewed TypoTracker, helps you find deals by searching for misspelled variations of the items you search for. Why?
Because most people that search for a particular item will try to spell it right - meaning that listings with typos might go unnoticed, and you'll wind up getting a sweet deal just because some seller was careless enough to not check his or her typing.
It's a great concept, but does it work?
I tried submitting a few queries to both sites, first looking for "thinkpad." Although TypoBuddy told me it had found 100 misspelled matches, clicking through to the eBay results netted only 76 - still very respectable. The search automatically homes in on your locale, so you may need to change locations to get more results.
Yesterday, we posted that Craigslist joined the 20th century with a 1990's-esque blog to let the world in on what's going on within the inner self of Craigslist. Today, Craigslist is already making fantastic progress through time. No, the blog still looks like it belongs in 1996, but it is demanding that the fan operated craigslistblog.org surrender it's domain.
Although Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster hasn't asked Tim White, the fan blogger, to stop blogging - he does claim that the domain name infringes on intellectual property and is confusing to the media and the public. That, and some of the content Tim White was using was exclusive to Craigslist and shouldn't be posted. In an effort to meet halfway, the blog now prominently displays that it is indeed an "unofficial" blog and has removed the content in question, but apparently that is not enough. Probably now that Buckmaster has his own blog he feels the need to defend it with a lawsuit.
If you are interested in what the exact correspondence was, Valleywag has it available for your viewing pleasure. It is however, sad to see a company like Craigslist resort to 21st century intellectual property chest-beating strongarm tactics instead of engaging the blogger in a civilized manner and at least attempting to come to a mutually agreeable resolution before issuing threats. This is neither going to make Craigslist look good nor will it make them any friends.
Craigslist has just added more languages to its online classifieds service. While there was no official announcement on Craigslit, founder Craig Newmark announced the news on his personal blog.
The added languages include Spanish, French, Italian, and German. Future supported languages might include Basque and Klingon, though the latter has fallen out of everyday usage here on planet Earth.
In case you've been hiding under a rock (and said rock doesn't have an internet connection): Craigslist is a free online classifieds service that serves pretty much every major metropolitan area in the US and abroad.
Odds are, if you're an avid user of craigslist, you've often asked this question: why can't I have the ability to see the images of each listing without having to click on each listing individually?
Download Squad reader "Mac" feels your pain, and has directed us to a new Firefox extension, Craigslist Image Preview. This neat and simple extension loads a thumbnail of the product images on the craigslist search page itself, eliminating the need to click on each individual listing to view an image.
Ah, Firefox, will thy extensibility never cease to amaze us?
The weird thing is, the only section of craigslist that has this functionality by default is the "bikes" section.
What's up with that?
Anyway, Craigslist Image Preview is a cinch to download (it installs like any other Firefox extension); once downloaded and installed, the next time you search craigslist, you'll see the first image of each listing load underneath its listing title. Obviously, the load time of the search page is much longer, but we think it's worth it.
For similar if not identical functionality, check out CLPicView version 1.0, also just released. Both extensions are free, and both seem to have an equal dislike of Firefox 3 beta 4.
There's a lot of garbage on Craigslist -- including vowels, apparently. Crgslst cuts to the chase, providing a quick Ajax site that switches between cities and categories on Craigslist with one click. It looks a lot prettier than the real thing, too!
Since there are hundreds of different city pages on Craigslist now, you can save a ton of time by jumping between them within the same search. Crgslst doesn't allow a simultaneous nationwide search, although it could easily do so, because that feature has gotten sites shut down in the past. This is the next-best thing, though, and we hope it lasts.
Crgslst has another leg up on the built-in Craigslist search engine because it lets you quickly save what you're doing. You can pick up to 10 favorite cities, to avoid having to reselect your city from the map or the popular cities list every time, and you can save interesting listings to a compact sidebar. If the folks at Craigslist do want this site shut down, they could do worse than to steal from its design, which a huge improvement on the original.
One of the best sources for minimalist classifieds, Craigslist has decided to branch out and learn Spanish. The new feature is still rather limited, as the new language toggle is only available for select cities and areas: namely those located in Central and South America.
Considering the large number of Spanish speakers in the U.S., it would be nice to see the feature spread to those cities and areas as well. We love convenience, and language adaptation is one of the best ways to open sites up to new groups of users.
Interestingly enough however, the classifieds themselves remain "unclassified" as far as languages go. So even though you are able to modify the parameters of a classified search in Spanish, there are no filters that allow you to only view Spanish classifieds.
The update will probably matter more once Craigslist makes the language options global for all its pages and allows for language filters for the classifieds as well.
eBay is getting a facelift. And while it's probably long overdue, we're not quite sure if its necessary.
While pretty much every new website you see these days use newfangled tools like AJAX and Flash animation to provide a desktop-like experience without the need to reload a webpage, a handful of popular sites have continued to get by with a web 1.0 interface. Craigslist and eBay are probably the first two that come to mind. After all, if you're shopping for used goods and bargains, a flashy website might just make you feel like the seller is trying to hide something.
That said, there's one thing that has always made items more attractive on eBay and Craigslist: pictures. And the new eBay design does a good job of highlighting pictures. You can still use the traditional list view with a tiny thumbnail. But for selected categories, you can also choose a "Picture Gallery" or "Snapshot View."
In Picture Gallery, you see large thumbnails with item information like title, price, and time remaining underneath. The Snapshot View shows you just a screen filled with images. Click on one and a window will pop up with a larger photo and more info about the item. For items where looks matter more than specs, shopping by photo could definitely be more productive than shopping by title.
The new views aren't available for all users for every category yet, but the company plans to roll them out for everyone by the end of the year. Some categories will also allow you to search by size, brand or color.
Say on your last vacation you traveled abroad and found a candy, coffee creamer, or consumer electronic device that just wasn't available in your home. Sure, you could buy a plane ticket and fly halfway across the world to pick up some more chocolates. But even if they were really good chocolates, it's probably not worth it (unless you buy in bulk).
Bringsome is sort of like an international Craigslist. Just post what you're looking for, preferably with a photo, and what you'll offer in exchange. One person from Kuala Lumpur would really like some Greek Pepperonci and would be happy to buy someone a beer if they pick some up and bring it back to Malaysia on their next trip. Another user is willing to pay someone $270 to pick up a digital camera that's not available in Romania. Of course, that's only a few bucks over the sale price in the US, so you'd do this out of the goodness of your heart, not to make a quick buck.
Overall it's a pretty nice idea. But as with any online classified site, whether or not bringsome is successful will depend on its ability to build a user base. Right now there are only 60 active ads.
It seems like some internet savvy hookers have found out that Craigslist is the place to be in order to attract Johns interested in a little offline business.
Local authorities have been monitoring the employment and for sale ads, and have noticed a steady increase in action from the sex trade business. Nassau County, New York was where the latest sting took place. In the past year alone, over 70 arrests have been taken place just from Craigslist ads. Police have started placing decoy ads on the website and monitoring it to catch would be customers in the act. High tech hookers have taken off all across the US, with another recent arrest of 60 in Illinois that used Craigslist to advertise their services.
Craigslist says that its 24 staff members cannot possibly flag all objectionable ads, but that hasn't stopped law enforcement officials from accusing them of enabling prostitution. Others are saying that the sites digital footprints help law enforcement crach down on the sex trade. On one day over 9,000 listings alone were added to the "Erotic Services" category in the New York region. Welcome to Prostitution 2.0.
If you want to sell a used computer, eBay's great. But if you're looking to unload a mattress, car, or dining table, not so much. One of the great things about eBay is that you can buy items from anyone in the world, which helps keep the prices low. But once you add shipping, heavy items are kind of a hassle.
Sure, you could look for items available for pickup, but most people have just migrated to online classified sites like Craigslist that have strong local communities.
Cozybug wants to take on Craiglist and eBay's own Kijiji in the local classifieds market. The concept is simple enough. Enter your location and search for items like appliances, furniture, or clothing -- no shipping required. You can also search the entire site and find out what people are selling halfway across the country. You just can't pick it up unless you make the trip out there.
What does Cozybug have that Craiglist lacks? A nice site design with graphics and thumbnail images. What does Craigslist have that Cozybug doesn't? Users. And ads. A national search for "bicycle" currently brings up exactly one listing. And apparently there are only 10 mattresses for sale in the U.S.
Cozybug has a good concept. But it's the user base that makes sites like these successful. It'll be interesting to see if they can attract one.
Craigslist is the number one online classified location, after all, they pioneered it. Now there's a new kid on the block, and its owned by eBay.
Craigslist, founded in 1995 by Craig Newmark, now serves over 5 billion page view per month, giving it a 34th place rank among worldwide web sites. However, eBay has been operating a similar service called Kijiji in Europe for over two years with some success, so it has begun branching out to the rest of the world. The bargain site will now be available in 220 cities across the US and targeted at young people and families looking for bargains. eBay might own a 25% stake in Craigslist, but that's not making Newmark sweat one bit.
Kijiji still does not have the content necessary to beat out Craigslist, but with some slow and steady work you never know. Craigslist does have a strong brand following, and we're hard-pressed to think users of that site would ever switch.
Whereas Listpic has previously provided a graphical browsing experience to the largely text-based Craigslist, Listpic is now powered by Oodle. Unlike Craigslist, Oodle does show pictures next to listings, but there's something extraordinarily useful about being able to browse classifieds by photos alone.
And most importantly, Oodle has an open API, and Listpic founder Ryan Sit got permission from Oodle before re-launching his site. Which is good news, because in our interview with Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster last week, he kind of subtly hinted that there's no way in hell that Craigslist was going to let Listpic start scraping Craigslist ads again.
The new Listpic looks pretty much identical to the old listpic. The only changes are under the hood.
For the past few months, you could use a 3rd party website to browse Craigslist by looking at pictures rather than text-based titles. In a lot of ways, Listpic made perusing classified ads far more useful. In fact, some users say they started spending far more time looking at Craigslist ads once they discovered Listpic.
That's why many users are complaining about Craigslist's decision to block the service yesterday. In a brief forum post, Craig Newmark wrote that the site was causing "a major bandwidth drain, slowing the site down for everyone else," and that there's "also one other major issue still under investigation, where we have yet to determine who's responsible."
Interestingly, Newmark comments that he did like Listpic's visual aspect, so it'll be interesting to see if Craigslist eventually works out some sort of a deal with the site or implements its own graphical browsing element.
Looking at Craigslist's terms of use, it appears that the company has reserved the right to delete accounts, block email or IP addresses, or generally terminate service for pretty much any reason. That's not to say they didn't have a reason. The terms of use also forbid "creation of derivative works from or redistribution of the site or the collective work." No matter how useful Listpic was, it clearly falls under tha category of a derivative work, and it's remarkable that Craigslist didn't block the service sooner.
While Craigslist founder Craig Newmark insists that online classified ads are not solely to blame for the decline in newspaper revenue, more and more online marketplaces are popping up. And they're partnering with sites like Facebook and Friendster, not just news sites.
Friendster's new service launched today, and it's a partnership with OLX. In fact, basically what you get if you click the "classifieds" tab at the top of Friendster is a redirect to an OLX page with items for sale, real estate, job listings and the other usual classified fare. Atop the page is the Friendster logo and some links to other Friendster sections.
OLX and Friendster will split the revenue generated by the multi-year deal. But there don't seem to be any Friendster-specific features. Basically, the partnership will help introduce Friendster users to OLX. There's no way to say, share postings with just the people in your friends group or offer jobs to people you know.
