Google Maps hack creates urban jungle out of Street View

If you’ve wondered what our cities would look like post-apocalypse, a new hack for Google Maps gives you a peek of what that world would be like. Urban Jungle Street View gives you a look into concrete jungles filled with vegetation and whatnot. Einar Öberg designed the experiment with the use of Google Street View’s depth data. It helped him plot the grasses and trees on the road and have ivy crawling up buildings. It can supposedly work in any location but you would probably see greater effects in city centers.

Source: CNET

Google Maps for iOS to help you find quickest way home

Google Maps users on iOS can now find the fastest ways to get home with a new update. The iOS version is finally getting the feature that has been available for Android for about a month. You can chart a route home and set that as Google Maps shows you traffic data in real-time and inform you of the quickest way you can get home. You can choose to re-route or stick with your original plan. This feature works for countries where navigation is supported.

Source: Ubergizmo

Google Maps on iOS gains access to your flight, hotel and restaurant reservations

Google Maps on iOS just got a lot smarter with the recent update which now enables flight, hotel and restaurant reservations right to show up from the app. Integrating the functionality of Google Now into Maps, any of the above reservations that are tied in to your Gmail account will auto-populate on any relevant maps. This is  nicely integrated solution for globetrotting iOS users.

Google, NatGeo partner to offer 500 historic map online

Google and National Geographic have partnered to put over 500 of its signature fold-out historic paper maps onto the Google Maps Engine platform. Frank Biasi, digital development director at National Geographic, said high resolution maps will also be for sale or be available for licensing deals.

Source: The Verge