This site will likely either get down down for TOS violations - or its spidering IP will get blocked by craigslist.

If anyone on hackernews wants a (more powerful) ruby program/lib to do this exact thing (with multi-city amd regex search support!), I recommend you check out craigwatch/libcraigscrape : http://www.derosetechnologies.com/community/libcraigscrape

I've noted, over the years, many sites that scrape craigslist data for one purpose or another. They run for a few months, get popular, get noticed by craigslist, get shut down.

Do you have ongoing communications with them to avoid this fate?

I think the site is OK, but I get this same general functionality from doing a search on craigslist and then adding that search as an RSS feed. While I don't get INSTANT updates, I'm in my RSS reader often enough during the day that I usually see things quickly enough. Still, not a bad idea, and if you're really looking to be the first person to see a new post, I can see how this would come in really handy.

Hi I've done the same thing, http://www.craigdiddy.com and I also have a list of all the other sites that do this and why mine is the best. Besides email you can currently get free sms to find out even faster (via Twitter) and I plan on releasing the non-interface code on github.

Thank you for not using JavaScript unnecessarily.

In fact, thank you for not requiring me to create an account or register or asking if I wanted to receive valuable offers via e-mail.

I'll comment back if it finds anything, but as far as the paint on the outside goes, it looks nice and is something I would definitely use.

[edit] - technically you did create an account and I did have to click a link to activate. I still stand by the thank you (and that's just smart going anyway).

Not bad at all. I had the same idea and was about to implement it, but you beat me to it. The only suggestion (small one) that I have, is that once you register for the first time, and it suggests you register again for another keyword, the city drop-down menu changes back to default. Generally speaking (although not always the case), the requester would probably choose the same city for every keyword search.

Thanks for knocking something off my to-do list. However, what I really wanted (and I wrote an ugly version for myself) is an update for apartments. We were looking for 1-2 beds that allowed dogs/cats within a certain prices range, not in certain neighborhoods. Add that feature and you have an awesome product.

It's cool and useful--the thing is there are a ton of cool/useful apps that COULD be built on top of craigslist, but craigslist does everything in its power to prevent that from happening. Is there a reason you won't get shut down?

- allow a '+' in the email address

- make the data sticky, if you give me an error when I enter a '+' in the email address, I want the stuff I previously entered to be there

But it looks nice, I'm hoping to get a free bike

I've been a fan of http://www.craigslistwatch.com/ for a long time, and they'd never gotten banned but unfortunately currently undergoing some sort of restructuring.

No about, no contact, not even a privacy statement where you assure not to do bad things with all the mail address you collect.

Cool.

Might get spammy.

I don't see a revenue model anywhere. Nor a marketing model. Pull out the checkbook for adsense?

A craig's site I used before, has changed their name, one of the reasons for change was:

   This is the big one. Craigslist doesn't like related 
   sites that use their 'Craig' name. And that's only fair. 
   As always, I try to do everything possible not to 
   irritate the big guy. The site hasn't drawn his wrath 
   yet, and this change is an important step to keep it  
   that way.

Great! I'd like it if it remembered my city so I can add a few search terms in a row.

won't this spam the crap out of people?

or are you doing the smart thing and just sending people a single email "We've found a new match" with a link to the craigslist search results, sorted for their search preferences?

i couldn't find San Francisco or Bay Area or SFBay in the list!

this is great, very simple and straightforward!

I was just speaking with someone this morning about setting up CG updates to look for freelance gigs. Great start. Web workers will need to track several, if not all, cities though.