TiE20, the Midwest's largest conference on entrepreneurship, recently announced the winners of the TiE20 Midwest Industry Awards
and waze was one of them! Selected from more than 1,000 nominated companies, waze and the 19 other winners represent the most
enterprising startup companies in four focus segments: Internet, Media, Mobile and Software. Woo hoo!
Well looksy what we have here…waze user carolinabigblue had 667 trick-or-treaters come by his house, and who did he come to the door as? None other than Wazer, himself! Carolinabigblue said he had some nice reactions from the in-the-know adults. Way to help us spread the word…
Just last week, our VP Community Geographer, Di-Ann Eisnor, did a great, and lengthy!, interview with Tim over at Geek Free Radio. They covered tons of topics from privacy and safety issues all the way to what’s comin’ up for us over at waze if you wanna sneak peek. Click here to hear the full interview.
Halloween’s approaching, so you’re gonna want to want to keep your eyes peeled for some new road goodies distributed all over the map over the next 2 weeks. We’ve got cute little pumpkins worth 2 bonus points, and spooky ghosts, worth an extra 10 points, but the pièce de résistance will be the treasure chests that you might encounter. Some will be empty, but others will have awesome waze goodie bags inside of them. If you’re lucky enough to encounter one with a prize in it, sit tight and we’ll be in touch via email to coordinate its delivery to you. We think you’re never too old to enjoy the fun of Halloween. Anyone dressing up? Tell us your plan in the comments section 
Happy to announce a partnership we’ve developed with NBC 2 News Online, out of Florida. The folks over there have implemented a new concept into their broadcasts called ‘citizen traffic’ – road reports from waze users in the area, extracted from the app and used to further enhance their live traffic reports.
Click the above image to be taken to the video announcing NBC 2′s collaboration with us for the first time on the air. We’re pretty excited about the exposure and hope to partner with other local stations, as well. Stay tuned for those announcements, but in the meantime, you wazers out there in Fort Myers, Cape Coral and Naples, Florida, make sure you’re reporting during the local rush hour for your chance to be a star!
Just call us ‘Covergirl’ 
A little while back we annouced this promo for iPhone users, but now, Android peeps (and others, see below), you have a chance to take part in it, too. So the first question remains - iPhone and Android users, ready to pimp out your waze car with some branded goodies? Well, all you have to do is get a few friends onto the ‘Friends’ tab of your scoreboard. Two friends on the scoreboard will get you a waze-branded car freshener, and five friends will get you a waze-branded sun shade and a car freshener, too. Score!
So, how to do this?
1 – Connect your waze account to your Facebook account. You can do that here: Settings>Profile>Facebook.
2 – Invite your other friends who have iPhones or Android phones and tell them the steps that they need complete to help you get your stuff (they need to download waze and connect their Facebook account to waze, as explained above – encourage them to try out the app a bit, as well!)
3 – Once they complete these steps, your friends will appear on your scoreboard and you’re good to go. At that point, just fill in the fields found on this form and after we verify the information you input as accurate, we’ll send out your goodies! Please allow at least 8-10 weeks for delivery.
UPDATE – ** for wazers on other platforms, there’s a way for you to participate, too **
Go to ‘My Dashboard’ and click on the Facebook connect option – see circled parts, below. Once you’re connected via Facebook, a link will appear near the Facebook connect button that allows you to see your ranking. When you click that button, you can click the ‘Friends’ tab to see if you’re eligible fo the swag. Hop to it, guys!
Recently, one of our super users in New Zealand, Wayne McDougall, has done some great work on the waze wiki page. Though he’s only been wazing since March 2010, Wayne has taken quite a leadership role in the community and took it upon himself to redesign the wiki format, including a ‘waze thought cloud’, that will hopefully one day turn into an interactive cloud. The main purpose of the new design was to make the wiki more readable. Take a look and let us know what you think, you can join the conversation about the wikipage here.
Way to go, Wayne. Thanks so much for your involvement!
One of the things we like most over here at waze is when there’s local press somewhere out there in the world. It gives us a great opportunity to turn to the map in that area and see how much we’ve grown, as word spreads in that particular location. Case in point: The Netherlands. Waze user, Gerben, took it upon himself to publicize waze on a local radio show over there, following which, we saw an explosion of baby wazers on the map. Really nice to see for us, and if you’re out there wazing in the area, make sure to reach out to ping-enabled baby wazers, say hi, and welcome them to the club…
Gizmodo, the super popular gadget guide, did some recent coverage on the best navigation apps out there and guess who earned the bronze medal in the navigation? Nope, guess again. Uh, huh, that’s right – it was us over here at waze! Here’s what they had to say about us:
“Waze uses user-generated maps which aren’t always perfect, but it’s free and turns navigation into a “social” game where you can see other Waze users on the road and earn points by hitting landmarks. Not useful enough to be a full time GPS but fun enough for those times where driving gets boring.”
As you know, the more people who use waze in your area, the better and more reliable the maps, and therefore, the navigation, becomes, so make sure to help spread the word. Once there’s an active comunity of drivers in your city, waze actually becomes better than a standard GPS, as dymanic changes in the city’s maps are able to be updated in an instant. And then there’s the fun bits. We like the fun bits, and hope you do, too…
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