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Wired News: When David Yang recently looked for a new apartment in Chicago, he took an aerial tour of the city.
As a 22-year-old on a limited budget, Yang couldn’t afford to hire a helicopter for his visual inspection of Chicago. Instead, he turned to HousingMaps, a hack that combines craigslist real estate listings with city maps from Google Maps. It lets users pinpoint locations, along with one-click access to photos and descriptions, of dozens of available apartments in more than 20 North American cities.
“It’s like flying around the city looking at real estate,” said Yang, a consultant for Deloitte. “If I know where my friend lives, or I know where an El (train) stop is … I can just zoom in and see what’s convenient to me.”
HousingMaps, created by Paul Rademacher, a 3-D graphic artist from Santa Clara, California, is just one of several innovative hacks giving users new ways to use information since Google launched its maps service. Google Maps offers detailed maps of nearly anywhere in the United States or Canada on which users can quickly zoom in or out.
Hey Google, Map This! [Wired News]