Holy Amazing Interface, Batman! Paul Rademacher’s Brilliant Lodging Finder

I’m not sure if it is healthy to be excited about an interface, but I am certainly excited about this one: Paul Rademacher’s Google Maps and Craigslist Combination( view on Mozilla-based browsers ).

The service, called “Craigslist-GoogleMaps combo site” by its creator, Paul Rademacher, marries the innovative Google Maps interface with the classifieds of Craigslist to produce what is an amazing look into the properties available for rent or purchase in a given area. Note: you’ll have to drill down into the map yourself, as I don’t see a way to bookmark an example to show you. Here’s a screenshot, though:

My realtor is going to need a strong drink when she sees this! Not only does this completely change real estate, but it also further demonstrates the power of Craigslist, which is already said to have done massive damage to newspapers in terms of lost classifieds revenue. Now, if we could only do this for the mortgage industry, there would be justice in the world!

This could be the most important interface we’ve yet seen in the early Web 2.0. While the APIs created by Amazon, Google, and eBay are cool in and of themselves, it’s combinatory interfaces like this that really shine. Note that anybody could have done this! This directly follows the post I wrote a few days ago: the interface is where innovation finds value.. It is no coincidence, my friends, that smart folks like Adaptive Path and 37Signals are putting new efforts into creating interfaces like these.

This is the future….this is exactly the type of thing that the Semantic Web promised, and exactly why Web 2.0 is so cool.