Here's another (in a series?) of cool but iffy experiments on L.A.'s web space lately: a tool that lets you search for "a 2BR condo with a pool and fireplace in Redondo."
RentSlicer.com (beta) claims to provide "the bluebook of L.A. rental property" by data-mining real-estate listings from the CraigsList RSS feed.
Actually, it offers a better search interface of Craig's ads than CraigsList does, with slick-looking data-parsing tools that let tenants (and landlords) comparison-shop (and set prices) from neighborhood to neighborhood. Here, for instance is what apartments, condos, townhouses and houses are going for in Agoura Hills, one of 35 rental markets RentSlicer covers ...
No telling yet what kind of a dent this might put in the $60 monthly fee that WestSide Rentals' charges for 60 days' access to its own listings - or whether RentSlicer's in any danger of litigation for swiping Craig's data.
My initial read on that would be - nope. The feed is out there for public consumption, the site plainly says what it's about and doesn't compete directly with its data source - and litigation is not Craig Newmark's style.
Besides, job sites like RSSJobs.com and PickaJob.com are already running pretty robust search tools based on data mined from Monster, CareerBuilder and the other big dogs.
