How does blockchain.info detect double spends? http://blockchain.info/tx-index/242749/36080ed09eeb0fd66ad5dc8a909a49e364f55ff860c12327c2ff9fbe4a9dde77


  Warning! this transaction is a double spend. You should be extremely
  careful when trusting any transactions to/from this sender.
All valid transactions are relayed through the network. A client does not know which transactions will be a part of a block, so it stores and relays both double-spent transactions. If you regularly poll your bitcoind, you can see every transaction before it is put in a block. Then it is just a matter of checking txin data for duplicate inputs.