Google just rolled out free near-real-time traffic reports for its Google Maps. If you're lucky enough to live in one of the 30 major cities covered and need to know up-to-date traffic conditions on that city's major highways, you can see them on color-coded maps that even differentiate between northbound, southbound, eastbound and westbound lanes.

The colors show the speed of traffic, where red is like a virtual parking lot, yellow means traffic has slowed down a bit, and if you're lucky, it's clean and green. Now if the maps would just place little markers where all the cops are hiding. – Charlie White

Stuck in traffic? [Google Official Blog]

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