Show HN: AutoGlance | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: AutoGlance

autoglance.com

68 pointskapkapkap30 comments

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Awesome! This is ridiculously better than Craigslist.

A quick heads-up: Using the parameters provided in the HN link, a number of the listings are dead, including:

http://www.cars.com/go/search/detail.jsp?listingId=86102429

http://www.web2carz.com/68535832/2008/acura/tl/used-cars/for...

http://www.web2carz.com/68335253/2005/acura/tl/used-cars/for...

Will these be purged periodically?

Well, our scrapers take about 2-3 days to complete a loop, so it is indeed possible for you to find dead links here and there...It shouldn't be a large percentage though.

Fortunately, we will have API's from two major source sites within the next few weeks, and that should greatly reduce our dependence on scraping.

Pretty cool. One point that makes it less "Hipmunky" to me is the fact that for a new search I need to select a maker/model from a dropdown (there's no other option). Feels like an artifact from the past in this case. Why not just have a single autocomplete search box?

e.g. I just want to type in "Rabbit" and see the VW Rabbit results instantly.

Good point, this seems to be the trend for a number of newer car sites, we will probably ditch the make/model dropdowns soon as well.

Hey I'm the co-founder of AutoGlance. Any feedback / comments / suggestions are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

It's a shame that some of the selections don't seem to be mapped to the underlying data in a trustworthy way. If I do a filter on "convertibles" I get a lot of non-convertibles, which creates this tension of "did the last filter I did remove too many things that I would want to see".

If you are selecting a body style from the homepage, its possible that you are de-selecting convertibles and instead searching for everything else (since all styles are depressed by default). You are the third person to mention this, so I definitely think we have a UI issue here. We will definitely figure out a better way to present the options.

Yes. That's it.

The way you suppress listings that are "worse" than the one displayed is kind of weird to figure out, and sometimes really deceptive when the "best" deal is a $900 parts car that is masking a few $5K daily drivers.

I know exactly what Hipmunk is, but I have no idea what "Hipmunk for cars" is.

I don't know why you were downvoted for expressing this thought. I had the same one.

I see it. It's a strongly intuitive visual search for used cars, as opposed to airplane tickets.

The point of these "X for Y" little slogans is to elucidate what the site does by analogy. When I think Hipmunk, I think flight scheduling. There is no equivalent for cars, and this is not a car scheduling anything. Thus the "Hipmunk for Cars" line just left me confused... it failed at its purpose and shouldn't be used as it's not a clear analogy.

Car was totalled today, and lo and behold a current HN headline has the exact tool I never knew I needed.

Weird how often that happens.

Thanks, guys. Excited to be a customer.

I've done three searches now and have noticed that when I click "see listing" most of the links are invalid. Filtering to 100 miles in distance still returns results that are significantly more than 100 miles away (results from IL when using a CA zip code).

It's interesting for a new site but not that useful for searching for vehicles yet as it probably needs more filters. For example, searching for a Ford F-150 returns a lot of results but someone buying an F-150 is probably going to have a specific subset in mind. Getting a ton of two wheel drive, standard cab with bench seat models when you want four wheel drive, king cab with bucket seats is going to be very frustrating.

Yup, and sometimes particular option are the biggest part of the deal. I'm currently looking for cars that can sear 6+ passengers. Usually I see this as "third row seat". Don't seem to have that option.

Also, the min-max sliders are a bit tricky on an iPhone.

Great work, I think this is going to be something special. Congrats on the launch!

Quick things: it'd be nice to have a "tweet" button rather than a follow so I can tweet about it! Also I find the top of the page a bit cluttered. It'd be nice to move the "Generation Images" to a more discrete place since it feels odd there and I didn't know what it meant at first.

Other than that, great work, I'm excited to use this in the future!

Nice UI. Glad to see it improving. A few suggestions: - You should be able to edit all the parameters you set when you created a search (e.g., radius) - A keyword filter would be nice, otherwise I have to look at each car to see if it has the package I want - There are freshness problems: many of the cars I clicked on were already sold or links to nonexistent listings

Keyword search is our number one priority right now. We wanted to have it ready for this re-launch but unfortunately things didn't work out that way.

Nice! You guys are definitely heading the right direction in terms of information architecture, UX and UI. I would like to see a overall price distribution reference with the results (i.e. of the total returned results, n fell within range a, n fell within range b, etc.) The ability to sort by price would be nice too. Good job and keep iterating.

Looks very nice. My only feedback so far is on the feedback tab that blocks content and is generally distracting.

Sweet! This looks really useful. Hope to see support for Canada!

Thanks! You certainly aren't the first person to request Canadian support, its definitly on our list of things to investigate.

Is the largest barrier a matter of finding reliable sources?

It was really easy to use for my mom. Thanks =)

Can you make it a bit easier to set a year range? Maybe a slider?

Otherwise, it seems really useful and looks really good!

You're right -- we should have a slider there instead of the checkboxes.

This is neat. How would you monetize this?

Not the author, but affiliate links to car purchasing websites seems like the obvious one.

Sell car leads directly to dealers and lead exchanges. High quality leads go up to $25 a piece.

I was working in this industry (developing lead exchange). Pretty lucrative.

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