Craig Newmark, the hypernerdy classifieds-site operator who's destroying the newspaper industry, has found the limits of Craigslist. After repeated appeals online, he's taken to looking for a pair of lost glasses using old media.

Specifically, the old-fashioned poster tacked on a streetlamp. One appeared near the San Francisco yoga studio from which the glasses were stolen, along with Newmark's Craigslist business card. The description — "Okio brand, brown with turquoise overtones" — closely matches a Craigslist posting which also mentioned the following missing items:

Timbuktu Void Backpack: navy with light blue stripe
-coach black wallet, passport, drivers licence, credit cards, cash, motorola phone, Ayurvedic herbs, grey scarf, grey jacket

Ayurvedic herbs, a grey scarf, a Coach wallet? If this doesn't match your image of Newmark, a diminutive and soft-spoken fellow who rarely meets the eyes of his conversation partners, it's because the glasses and the bag aren't his — they belong to his girlfriend, Eileen Whelpley, according to the Craigslist post. What a mensch! Newmark is willing to expose the ineffectiveness of his website to recover his girlfriend's glasses.

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