Addison Road

So Craigslist, as all of you hip young cats know, is simply the greatest and most intuitive way to find things, including houses to rent or buy. You get a quick link with pictures, important details, price, and address.

And Google Maps, as all of you hip young cats know, is simple the greatest and most intuitive way to find places.

So of course, an exceedingly awesome young man by the name of Paul Rademacher sat down and thought to himself, “You know, it probably wouldn’t be that hard to bust open the code of each, and write myself a handy little page that takes the craigslist ads and puts them on the google maps. That way, people will increase in joy and fruitfulness, throughout the greater metropolitan areas of the United States.”

And so, he did.

This is awesome for two reasons - first, because it exemplifies the value of the open source mindset for technology. Even though neither of these websites exists as open source projects, Paul’s use of them is certainly in that tradition. He’s added value to both sites for a specific purpose without detracting value from either.

Second, I love it because Google saw his site, and rather than send out their legions of lawyers to shut it down, they said, “This is awesome! This is innovative, and useful, and we’re going to promote it.” This is the kind of company that will be around for a long time. They value innovation, they see the strength in nurturing technology that doesn’t yet have any market value, and they see themselves as part of a community of technology innovators, not just as a competitor against them.

May their tribe increase!