Welcome

Earthify takes a page of Craigslist posts and maps them on Google Earth. It has been tested with both search result pages and browse pages in several categories. The results are divided into "Earthifyable Listings" and "Un-Earthifyable Listings", the un-earthifyable ones being those that could not be located using the Google Geocode API based on the location provided by the user. In my tests, the listings are Earthifyable more often than not, but it really depends on how much information is in the posting.

I'd like to EMPHASIZE that Earthify uses Google Earth, which is Google's 3D gegraphical browser. It really is a great program, so if you don't have it, I suggest that you get it here.

Although Craigslist does have RSS feeds, these feeds only contain 14 listings, as opposed to the 100 listings that you get on a typical result page. Therefore, to get the listings, I scrape the page rather than parsing the RSS. Because of this, Earthify is somewhat vulnerable to changes on Craigslist, so if you encounter problems while using the script, please let me know.

Earthify!

The Bookmarklet

A bookmarklet is usually a few lines of javascript posing as a toolbar shortcut. Instead of taking you to a new page, bookmarklets usually do something with the page that you are looking at when you click it. If you are using a browser that lets you drag links into a bookmark bar (ie: one that supports bookmarklets, like Firefox), you can...

1. Drag the link below into your bookmark bar bar.
2. Go to Craigslist and find the page of listings that you want to Earthify.
3. Click the Earthify bookmarklet
4. Please be patient! It takes a while to do all the magic to plot the listings, but it will work eventually.
5. If you have your browser set up to automatically open KML files with Google Earth, then that should be the end of it. Otherwise, you will see a file called earthify.kml on your desktop. Open this with Google Earth and you will see your listings Earthified.



Drag this bookmarklet onto your bookmarks bar
^ Drag this bookmarklet ^
onto your bookmarks bar.



The Network Link

You can also add Earthify to “Your Places” in Google Earth. This is essentially like subscribing to Craigslist listing page from within Google Earth. All you have to do is...


1. Find the page of Craigslist posts that you want to Earthify
2. Paste the Craigslist URL into the field below and click "Create Network Link URL"
3. Copy that link to your clipboard.
4. Open Google Earth.
5. Right-click on the “My Places” menu under the Places menu and select Add > Network Link....
6. Paste the modified URL into the "Link" field and give the Network Link a name like "Earthified Craigslist Rentals", or whatever applies to your listing.
7. Click "OK"

It will take a little while for the listings to download, so please be patient! Now, whenever you open up Google Earth, all you have to do is right click on the Place that you created and select "Refresh", and you will have the most recent postings Earthified.






Future Plans

  • Cache results for faster generation
  • Fix labels somehow so that they don't take up so much space
  • Ignore outliers when focusing camera
  • Instructions in different languages
  • Test in IE7
  • Make Earthify script for Upcoming.org, menupages.com. What else?