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• At the $1 level, PayPal will take most of it.
• At the $5 level, I'll be grateful as I eat a cheeseburger.
• At the $25 level, I'll send you a personalized thank-you email.
• At the $100 level, you'll get all of the above, and a PadMapper tshirt.
• At the $300 level, I'll add a town/city of your choosing to the map (assuming it has a craigslist).

PadMapper is a web application that aims to make searching online for an apartment to rent less painful by letting you see where the apartments are on a big Google map, and using the filters located in the box on the lower left to eliminate listings that you're not interested in.

When I was hunting for an apartment, I found myself reading through lots of ads that each had some fatal flaw (usually related to location) which was really time consuming to find for each one.

With PadMapper, you can rule out every place on Craigslist and PadMapper's other sources (coming soon...) that doesn't match your location criteria at a glance. After that, PadMapper tries to put most of the relevant information in front of you so you can quickly decide whether you want to investigate further.

Some tips:

• Zooming in will cause areas to fill in more.
• PadMapper runs MUCH better in Google Chrome, Firefox 3, and Safari than it does in Internet Explorer 6 or 7.
• The number of markers that can be displayed onscreen at once is limited to roughly 100, since it becomes choppy in some browsers (Internet Explorer) with more.
• Filtering reserves those 100 spots for apartments that you're more likely to like.
• If there's a big area that's empty that probably shouldn't be, zoom in on that area. If that doesn't help, try easing up on your filters. Also, try moving any large clusters of apartments you're not interested in offscreen by dragging the map or zooming.
• Zooming in very close shows some cool local attractions around apartments (not available everywhere)

If you encounter anything that confuses you, or see any bugs, please email me at padmapper@gmail.com. Feedback really helps - user feedback is the reason PadMapper is what it is today. Thanks, and enjoy your hunt!

If you'd like more information, check out the blog, the About page on the blog, or the TopHat Monkey Software homepage.

Recommended Services
There's a lot more to finding an apartment than just locating it, seeing it, and deciding you want it. There's often a credit check requirement, you have to take care of a bunch of paperwork, you actually have to move in, and then you have to pay monthly. There are lots of great resources online to help you do a lot of these things. There are also a lot of bad resources. This is meant to be a list of resources that have I have used and found to be good, or that have been vetted by someone I trust. If you know of any that would be a good addition, feel free to contact me at padmapper@gmail.com. Also, if you try any of these out, let me know how it goes so I can adjust.

Credit Report / Credit Checks
Every apartment you apply for will probably require a credit check. Rather than pay a $10-50+ fee for every application's check, why not obtain one very cheaply on your own and provide it with the app? I haven't found a source to recommend for this, but if anyone has any suggestions, I'm all ears.

I believe Equifax is one of the standards and I believe they're required by law to give you one free report annually. You may have to jump through hoops to obtain it, however.

Moving
Once you've found a place and signed the lease, you probably need to find some movers, unless you like hauling couches up stairs (I'm going with movers next time...)

· CityMove.com is a mover comparison search site that was recommended to me by a close friend of mine. She said it got her great movers for half the cost of a UHaul. If you try it out, let me know how it goes.

Any Others? Email suggestions to padmapper@gmail.com