Wednesday, January 7, 2009

An awesome and disturbing tool

The other day, I sent a friend an ad for a 1979 Mazda RX7 from San Francisco Craigslist. He wondered how you ran across something like that, when there were so many venues for classifieds and no way to search across them (in this case, it was on Bring a Trailer). I didn't have an answer.

Now I do: jaXed's site mash.

From the AACA forums, originally posted December 2007:

A few months ago I created some scripts to help me find a new Corvair. I wanted something to search nationwide and quickly. When I shared this with other Corvair people as a web site, they loved it and I was asked to add more vehicle makes. I've added just about everything you can imagine, and I add more daily. GM, Ford, MGs, Porsche, Triumph, on and on...

Fast forward to today, and I have a rather large "site mash" that goes out to Craigslist, eBay, cars.com, Hemmings, etc etc.. in search of Vehicles for sale. I've done all this for fun, and since people seem to like it I share it.

Long story short, if you are looking to buy something.. it might be listed here:

http://jaxed.com/cgi-bin/ms.cgi

So I tried a little look for 1978-1985 RX7s: 315 results...
Jaxed site mash

He's continued to update and refine it since, adding more specific searches (by request), and introducing a wildcard search:

I've recently overhauled the parts mash to support free-form searches. This means you can search for "67 mustang" and come back with the parts for that year of Mustang. 

http://www.jaxed.com/cgi-bin/sd.cgi

Some of you may not like is as much as the original (no more pretty pictures), but give it a try. I will be working on sorting and adding state matching as well.

You can add directly to his database or request a new make/model directly from the website, too.

site mash request

The power...the terrifying power. Please: Don't use it for evil, but do tell us what you're using it for. 

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Bravo, what necessary words..., a brilliant idea