CD-Swap

[Brandon Martus]

This Thanksgiving, I'm thankful for motivation. Last weekend, I finally got around to tackling some of my ToDo list items. So, today, I believe we are ready to unveil the part swap system: CD-Swap.

You can find a link to it in the upper menu area. This hasn't been thoroughly tested, so if you find any bugs, please let me know.

The CD-Swap system works like the classifieds section of your newspaper. If you have an extra part, or if you need an extra part, you can put in a request. Once it is approved by a moderator, it will show on the site for X days. Right now, we limit you to approximately 90 days, to keep the data fresh. You can always edit the item, and extend the expiration date.

The system is only meant to connect two people: those who need, and those who have. All agreements, trades, payments, or anything else related to your trade will happen on your own. The system just provides the link between the two people.

All data is searchable, even by how close the item is to your location (as long as you live in the US, for now). There will be a list of recent additions added to the portal to make these items more visible, and maybe some other new features once people get a chance to use the system.

The distance-based search dosen't work yet. I am currently (re)calculating the distances between each United States postal code, and the 800 million calculations is taking a while. That part of the search should be ready in a day or so. If you want to be able to search by distance, you must update your profile to indicate what zipcode you currently live in. Again, for now we only support US postal codes. If anybody has a list of zipcodes (and their latitude/longitude) for their country, please contact me.

Also, please read the CD-Swap about page to learn more about the specific CD-Swap system details.

Thanks to DeepWater (link) and Jeff Waegelin (link) for the idea.

As usual, any questions and comments are appreciated. We hope this will make finding (or getting rid of) some extra parts this build season a bit easier.