Hey now, not too shabby!

USA Today profiled waze today as a ‘Best in Class’ app. Here’s a ‘reprint’ of our nice little feature, found on the left hand column of the main article: 

“Waze (Waze, free), a community-based turn-by-turn navigation system. A clever way to get real-time traffic alerts based on input from others using the same app. “Every now and then an app wows us, and this is one,” Sawyers says.”

We love us some mainstream exposure like this. Hope it brings a new batch of users to the driving communities in your area!

Ian White, the CEO of Urban Mapping, gathered a very compelling panel for his block at this week’s Where 2.0 conference in San Jose – Peter ter Haar, the Head of Products for the UK’s national mapping agency, Tim Trainor, the Head of Geography at the Bureau of Census within the US Government, Steve Coast, the Founder of OpenStreetMap and our very own, Noam Bardin, CEO of waze. Prior to their talk at the show itself, White gathered everyone on a conference call for a little pre-show warm up, and the resulting conversation gives a wide overview of the mapping world and it’s current challenges and opportunities. If that’s your bag, click here to read the full article.

As you might have already read, we did our official launch last week in France and Germany, and the French press have really caught on to waze. We received coverage in some of the top tech publications in the country and were received with a lot of enthusiasm. Here are just a few examples of what folks over there are saying about us…

• “Plus qu’un long discours, je vous invite vraiment à profiter de ce logiciel gratuit et prometteur qui vous permet de faire votre trajet d’une nouvelle façon. Enfin un GPS différent ! “ * “More than a thousand words, I truly invite you to enjoy this free promising software that allows you to make your commute in a new way. Finally, a different GPS “- Baptiste Provoost

• “Avant de lancer ça, je me suis dit… c’est mort, dans ma campagne ce sera le grand vide : que nenni ! Toutes les routes (même les chemins forestiers interdits à la circulation ) étaient présents autour. Du coup je l’ai adopté !…Une appli très prometteuse “ * “Before running it, I told myself … it’s dead in my area,  it will be a big fail: but no! All roads (even the forest roads forbidden for traffic) were present around me. So I adopted it! …A very promising application “ – android-software.fr

• “L’application ne pèse que 8 Mo, ce qui est bien entendu très inférieur aux concurrents que sont TomTom, Navigon et autres solutions de navigation routière iPhone déjà vues dans nos colonnes. “ * “The application weighs only 8 MB, which is, of course, much lower than the competitors such as TomTom, Navigon and other solutions for iPhone vehicle navigation already seen in our features.”- iphon.fr

• “Nous avons pris connaissance de cette application la semaine dernière, après quelques jours de test, le test est concluant. La communauté française est naissante, la cartographie s’améliore de jours en jours, les développeurs compte sur la communauté soudée du monde iphone, pour la parfaire. Soyez les premiers pionniers de cette application.” * “We were made aware of this application last week, after several days of testing, the test is conclusive… Be the first pioneer of this application. “ – IPHONE-FORUM.FR