Hi, my name is Stew and I'm a Craigslist-oholic...

I love Craigslist and search for various things several times a week. I search for a variety of items and the list changes weekly. Even though the Bay Area is a huge marketplace, I still end up searching surrounding areas for specific items or for friends. (um, that sounds like I'm searching for friends... which I'm not doing, although I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I'm searching for items in far-flung-friend's areas.)


What I want is a way to search multiple geographic areas at once. I'd like to be able to tune the geographic area like any other search factor, without the hassle of jumping from one CL-area to another.
I've done a google search and scanned info for about a dozen different websites and software tools.
I'm more keen on the software angle than a website because I don't want to insert a middleman into the search realm. Not sure if that's really something that I should worry about, but I do.

At the moment (after only half-an-hour of research) I'm leaning toward trying out the freeware version of this:
http://www.motiont.com/craigslistreader.aspx

So-
For any other CL-philes out there in empeg-land, my question is-
How do you optimize your craigslist experience?