BlockShopper

No matter how content you are with your current pad, with the real estate market in such shambles, it couldn't hurt to take a look at what's out there -- but of course, that would require actual work, which means you'd damn sure better be content with your current pad. Presenting your shortcut: BlockShopper, just now storming Miami-Dade

Started by a journalist pissed about the murky world of public records that let Chicago politicos slip property tax, BlockShopper collects normally dispersed and excruciatingly tedious real estate data and deposits it conveniently at your fingertips. You can dig up deets by city, zip, school district, and even condo development, then dip into Block's diligently dug-up info from county offices like treasurer (taxes), assessor (acres, # of bedrooms, sq ft), and recorder (deed transactions); it's all organized to let you easily view any property's history (# of owners, how much each paid, how value increased/decreased for each), plus more, like taxes for any property and its neighbors -- a voyeurism every bit as dangerous as peeking in your neighbor's window to see he's got a much larger penis and crown moldings. There's also other angles of analysis, like finding sales and foreclosures by zip, graphs on historical median sale prices in specific hoods, and a news section compiled by independent journalists sniffing out stories on who's selling, buying, and building, including pics, so you can see that Yolanda the bail bondsman is selling a 4BR in Coral Gables, and that she's cute enough to jump her bail

As a salacious bonus, you can check who pays the highest property taxes in Dade/Broward/Palm Beach counties, and find some familiar names, like Mourning, Limbaugh, and Ciccone, though the last one reveals Block's one weakness: making you do actual work to figure out that Madonna has a last name.