Searching multiple Craigslist sites with alerts

Ziink:

Teach me something.

You are obviously talented with this stuff. It's free- so what's in it for you? How do you get compensated for your efforts?

I'm just kind of curious.

SVreX: I don't and I most likely won't get compensated for my efforts. Most Firefox add-on authors are in a similar situation. They do it because it's something they themselves find useful, it can help them find new jobs, they feel appreciated etc.

Now, in the off chance that this becomes wildly popular, this could be monetized.

For example, one of the features I have in mind is to show the prices of electronics and books from Amazon. Suppose you are looking for a laser printer and you open up an ad that looks interesting, the add-on will search for the specific printer on Amazon and list the price and link to the Amazon page. This can be a very useful feature because sometimes people ask for more than or almost as much as it's worth new. The buyer might just decide to buy it from Amazon. If I add an affiliate id in the link, then I'd get a small cut from Amazon. Of course, I don't really know what the real potential is in this case but some people make thousands of dollars from Amazon. This is just to give you an idea.

Another feature I have in mind is 'email privacy'. You have lot of spammers on CL and they make the ads very attractive but have email as the only way of contacting them. Each time you respond to such ads, you start getting additional spam. What the 'email privacy' will do is create temporary emails and automatically use those to communicate with the poster. If I do implement this, I'll probably want to charge monthly because I'll have to set up a server for this. Again, I don't know if it will really make me money but there's a chance.

Bottom line though is that I like programming, kinda like a hobby, and a similar approach a number of years ago made me a lot of money, and I did this because I wanted these features myself.

I think I have the Safari version working, which means it is working on my computer

https://sites.google.com/site/ziinkext/documents/clhelper.safariextz?attredirects=0&d=1

fritzsch (or somebody else), could you try it out and let me know if it works and what OS you tried it on.

4cylndrfury, could you try it on your IPad.

Thanks.

Hi Ziink,

Yeah I installed it and it seems to be working fine, and I am using it on Mac OS X 10.5.8

Thanks sounds like a great thing

Acutally im not sure the mulitsite search feature is working properly

Just installed, blows my mind. Thanks and good work!

Thanks to Nathan for Searchtempest too.

fritzsch, could you describe what's happening when you try the multi-site search. I don't have a Mac and it might take me a while to get a hold of one. Your description might help me fix the problem.

How about the other features? Previews, notes, alerts ... Are they working?

Anyone else with a Mac who is willing to try it out?

xfactoraeg, thanks.

Are you ready yet for viral?
I will be happy to post a rave review elsewhere on the internet?

Edit: Or, do we keep this our little secret as a way to find cheap [Insert (Miatas, E30, P71, etc)] before the next guy?

jrw1621, I just posted a new Firefox version with the easier 'Flag' feature. You can get it from

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/craigslist-helper/versions/

It's Version 0.0.06 or later.

I would definitely appreciate reviews : the add-on page or elsewhere on the internet.

As for keeping it a secret, consider that CL has about 30 million monthly users. So, even if this add-on becomes popular, it's users would still be a very small minority

Spam version for FF seems to be working well
Spread around the internet has begun. Note that as of today, 3-28-11, you have 202 downloads on FF. We will see what the future brings?

I'm ignorant of computer thingys in a 1981 kind of way. I tried to download but it says I need firefox. Problem is I'm looking at the firefox icon at the bottom of my screen that confirms I've installed firefox before. What am I missing? Thanks.

jrw1621: Looking forward to it. Thanks.

midknight: I'm assuming you use Internet Explorer to browse the internet (and this site). Double click on the Firefox icon instead and use that program. Once you have that running, go to

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/craigslist-helper/

and click on 'Add to Firefox'. You could install other add-ons too to enhance your browsing experience.

In reply to Ziink:

Thanks for the heads up this rocks!!

jrw1621, the download number is up by 50% (304). What did you do? Thanks.

Thanks Ziink!

fritzsch, I just tested 'Craigslist Helper' on Mac OS X and the multi-site search works. The way it is presently set up to work is that you first do a search on craigslist then use the multi-site search form (just below the craigslist search form on the top of the page) to expand the search by distance, state or all of cl.

Let me know if it still doesn't work for you.

midknight: You are welcome.

I am probably doing something wrong...but after I downloaded this, browsing CL on my computer is no fun. The pictures are over the text of the ad titles and such. Is this something I can fix? If not, I guess I need to uninstall.

Clem

If you click on the little hippy icon that it created up top, you can change the options to not display the thumbnails.

In reply to Ziink:

This is a great program. It perfectly compliments CraigslistNotification on my Evo.

Clem, you've encountered a bug but there's an easy workaround. 'Expand Search Form' and click on 'hide images' on top right of the Craigslist page.

The bug has already been fixed in the Chrome version but due to the review process involved for the Firefox version, it'll take a few weeks for the fix to show up.

I use chrome...fyi.

Funny thing though...After posting my last reply here...the problem didn't exist anymore on my computer. Eerily coincidental.

Anyway...working better now.

Thanks, Clem

Chrome automatically updates the extensions when a new version is available. So the extension probably got updated after you made the earlier post. Hope you are finding it useful.

I've been using Ziink for a few months with excellent results, this morning it started running google ads integrated into the search results. Sample result

Wow, how timely. I too have been using this for months and loving it but today, this morning, it seems to have stopped working. I still have the multi-colored peace symbol in the corner but it is not operating the way it should.
On XP w/ FF 3.6.13 on netbook it now just looks and acts like regular Craigslist.
No preview. No hover-over for description. No option to search by miles.
Strange, and boy do I miss it!

I am not getting the ads like shown above but rather just plain CL

@ansonivan: As part of my effort to improve Craigslist Helper, I'm working on being able to view ads beyond the time they have expired. I decided to use a server to do this and also decided to start showing ads to try to make some money. I'm assuming you posted because you don't care for the google ads. If so, I would highly recommend installing Adblock Plus. You could also revert back to the previous version from https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/craigslist-helper/versions/

BTW, with most ads, there's also link to hide the ads for an hour.

I hope you like the extension well enough that you'll choose one of the options I've listed above, or better still support my efforts and continue using it with the ads :)

@jrw1621: As I mentioned in the email, your best option for now is the downgrade to version 0.0.17 of the extension. Looks like somehow my changes broke the extensions compatibility with Firefox 3.6. You can find the previous version at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/craigslist-helper/versions/

Unfortunately, I don't have Firefox 3.6 installed anymore so it might take me some time to figure out what the problem is.