No problem. With housingmaps.com you can conveniently do so from your desk.Housingmaps is one of the first and most frequently quoted Mashups – it combines data from craigslist and Google Maps to an entirely new integrated experience.

The story behind is so hands on that it is always worth telling it: Paul Rademacher, then software engineer at Dreamworks Animation was looking for a new apartment. Soon, the fact that he would have to read advertisements and then look up the address on the map to see where it was, went on his nerves big time. He deciphered the Google Maps code and “mashed” the popular craigslist with Google Maps to create a hybrid. Thus, housingmaps.com was born in April 2005.

Paul Rademacher started a mashup boom: A month after going live there were thousands of mashups around. Google supported this trend by providing APIs (application programming interfaces) to potential developers making mashups part of the Google growth strategy.Oh – Paul Rademacher meanwhile works for Google. A similar service is available in Germany – targeted towards students: www.wohnungskarte.de .