About findyourauto.Net
findyourauto.net is an eBay mashup that uses Visual Search to quickly locate vehicles in your area. The interface is simple, intuitive and dynamic. Since you are buying local you now have the advantage of actually being able to inspect the vehicle, save on shipping, or just promote the local economy. You can also use this tool to quickly research the market around you if you are looking to sell a vehicle, or if you are moving to a new place and looking to buy a vehicle there. You can also have fun doing just plain-old window shopping, something that the editors at Jalopnik seem to enjoy at lot.
We hear a lot about power sellers on ebay. However, the philosophy of this site is to enable the buyers by giving them a Powerful search engine. So instead of spending 30 minutes looking for a vehicle you can do so in 2 minutes and spend the remaining 28 minutes trying to figure out how you are actually going to pay for it, and what 'mint-condition' really stands for.
You start off the search by setting your initial criterion (cars, trucks, motorcycle). Then you specify the zip code for a location. If you don’t have the zip code you can look it up for a city by clicking on location in the search bar. After specifying the location, you can give the search radius and how you want the results to be sorted, plus the maximum amount you are willing to pay. Hit Search and off you go.
Since I am in Michigan, winter is around the corner, I am looking at some Jeep Cherokee's within 250 miles of my location.
The map color codes the icons. :
auction is going to
end in 24 hours, 
: the auction is going to end
in 24-48 hours, 
: come back in a
couple of days, 
: multiple vehicles at this location.
The slider values now represent the range of my search results.
The search returns 9 vehicles sorted by Distance, I can sort the table by year, distance, mileage or price if I so want.
Since I am not really interested in a vehicle that is from 1977, or anything with more than 100,000 miles I filter the data by using the sliders and see the dots disappear on the map. I can 'unfilter' the data by moving the sliders back out. I also get a running count of how many vehicles meet my current search criteria. I finally have 2 cars left.
I can now hover on each of the icons and get a pop-up window showing the details including number of bids, distance, mileage etc. The Jeep in Cleveland, OH looks pretty good, is not that far off and has relatively low miles. I can now bid on this vehicle by clicking on 'See Details' or the title. Or, I can just wait 10 hours, 19 minutes and 55 seconds like everyone else.
This is an eBay compatible application, which means that it was developed by a member of the eBay Developers Program and passed the Compatible Application Check process to work directly with the eBay Platform.
This application is in continuous development, and I have some great features lined up based on user feedback. I should be implementing them over the next few months, so bookmark this page and come back often. You can also share it with your friends using
Create your own eBay-Virtual Earth maps mashup
Here are some sites with references to the technologies used in this application. Have fun creating your mashup