Google has offered travel information in Maps for quite some time, but now it’s going real-time – in a handful of cities, at least. The company has justannouncedthat live public transport information has been added to Maps for Boston, Portland OR, San Diego and San Francisco in the USA, Madrid in Spain and Turin in Italy. Departure times for buses and trains will be updated in real-time, meaning that if your ride is late, you should know about it....

Christmas shopping is guaranteed to unleash my inner Grinch. The urgency, the icy temperatures, the emptying shelves, and the crowds — sweet Santa, the crowds! They turn my Yuletide glee into deep holiday blues. This year, however, Google Maps is delivering some festive help. The app has gift-wrapped a bundle of new features to help shoppers survive the holiday rush. First up isArea Busyness, which analyzes geographical data to showwhen a neighborhood is crowded....

GoogleMaps 5.3 for Android hasjust been releasedwhich lets you see your Google Location History dashboard, and allows check in at “home,” and the ability to add your own aspects for places when rating them. For Android users thatenabled Location HistoryforGoogle Latitude, they have been able to visualize interesting trends in the location history with apersonal dashboardatgoogle.com/latitudeon the user’s computer. With the Maps 5.3 update, now users will see a dashboard on the Android by tapping “View location history” from the Latitude profile....

Finding information about the easiest routes to travel is part of what makes Google Maps an invaluable source for many of us. But navigating the layers is, often times, a real pain int he butt. According to theGoogle LatLong blog, the team at Maps is hoping to eliminate that hassle with the integration of a handy new widget in the top right of your map. From the widget, you’ll be able to select any layers that are available in your chosen map view....

Google Maps for Android has offered a vector 3D optionfor some time, presenting a fully adjustable, 360 degree view of the world. Now Google hasannouncedthat it’s bringing this to the browser, too in addition to other visual enhancements. If you have Chrome 14 or above, or the latest beta version of Firefox, and a graphics card that supports WebGL, you’ll be now be able to tryGoogle Maps GL. As the video below demonstrates, it offers a hardware-accelerated, 3D version of Google Maps without the need for a plugin....