This is fun and I really like it, although honestly don’t think I would use it. Not entirely relevant, but figured I would make the connection: I work in healthcare tech and knowledge management “lists” or ontologies are a huge area of investment. Example use cases: list of drugs, diagnoses, side effects etc.
It's great to see Bezos invest in a way that is quite different than other folks in tech's Big Philanthropy approach. Many are piling their money into trusts to avoid taxes now, but don't deploy their philanthropic dollars quickly. Even with increasing wealth and charity dollars in cities like San Francisco, local charities have had a hard time making ends meet. International philanthropy and trusts are not bad in and of themselves, but need to support local charities as well which seems to be the goal. Pretty awesome.
The GA was based on an open loop simulation. I tuned a digital canvas / painting simulation by hand and then evolved the paintings in simulation. After evolving the painting I would execute the painting with a robotic arm. I did some preliminary work on closing the loop: using the actual output of the painting to tune the simulation but didn't get too far. A paper on my methods / simulation and results: http://carlos.ag/GA2008paper.pdf
I completely agree with Josh that there is a gap in functionality that needs to be filled. I often hear the argument that I should be grateful for this free online service... Poppycock! My attention on the internet is worth something. Especially for such a profitable industry as classifieds.
If I'm looking for a house on the internet I want to be able to zoom into a certain area on a map and click 'refresh' to see all the relevant rentals with little pins on the map. This is not rocket science. Craigslist has a rich database and could make it far more useful and user friendly. There is something to be said for simple and minimalist design. Craigslist, however seems 'not designed' at all with little regard for making things easy to find or relevant.