Archive for July, 2012

Olympian Allyson Felix Uses Waze!

Tuesday, July 31st, 2012

The 2012 Olympic are in full force! One athlete to keep an eye on is USA Sprinter Allyson Felix. After finishing second in the 200 meter at Beijing 2008, Felix is one of the favorites to win in 2012. As part of AT&T’s video series “My Journey”, Allyson Felix highlighted her path to the London 2012 Games. In it she describes the apps she uses in and out of training.

SPOILER ALERT! She loves Waze.

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Introducing the Waze World Records

Monday, July 30th, 2012

Olympics-fever has swept over Waze HQ! And without a pass to this year’s games, we’ve decided to reveal our very own international mapping medalists.

As briefly mentioned last week, we’re going to be releasing the names of our all-star mappers in a series of blog posts that will acquaint you with our top mappers.

These dedicated map-editors hold the records in:

  • Solving system-generated map problems
  • Solving user-reported map problems
  • Adding house numbers
  • Adding roads

Can you guess who will top each category? Are there any other record-breaking categories you’d like to see?

Update: We’ll also be revealing the editors that have made the most all-time map edits as well!

3000 Gas Stations Added Within Days

Thursday, July 26th, 2012

In the first days following our announcement, more than 3,000 gas stations were added by the map editors community.

The leading countries to see a rise in the number of gas stations are Italy, France, Germany, the United Kingdom and Sweden.

As soon as we’ll reach a significant enough number of stations in a country, we’ll enable gas price updates by users and search by price will be enabled. That can happen pretty quickly for the leading countries below…

Check out the top contributors, by country, below:

Italy – 331 Gas Stations

ferdinando288GTO – 49 Gas Stations

frfabi – 45 Gas Stations

m4rc072 – 35 Gas Stations
   

France – 240 Gas Stations

mgcarre – 30 Gas Stations

Coilans – 20 Gas Stations

Mycrophage – 13 Gas Stations
   

Germany – 217 Gas Stations

trunkenbold – 23 Gas Stations

Drazhar – 20 Gas Stations

Haegar – 10 Gas Stations
   

United Kingdom – 213 Gas Stations

Timbones – 18 Gas Stations

smstext – 17 Gas Stations

CTCNetwork – 12 Gas Stations
   

Sweden – 210 Gas Stations

ulfhe – 35 Gas Stations

MartinMossfeldt – 29 Gas Stations

hurja – 15 Gas Stations
 
 
So, what are you waiting for? Why not start adding gas stations to your country today?
 

Waze and X Fest Mark The Spot!

Wednesday, July 25th, 2012

Waze and X Fest: Together August 4th!

With over 60 bands and 12 stages, X Fest, slated in Modesto, California, is going to be central valley’s biggest party of the summer. Over 20,000 people from all around northern California will drive into the city to see their favorite acts! That’s a whole lotta cars.

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How Well Do You Know Your Wazers?

Tuesday, July 24th, 2012

Greeting Wazers, please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Edon and I’m the latest addition to the team at Waze HQ.

I’ll be spending lots of my time on the blog writing about our mapping activities and highlighting our awesome community.

Posts will include the latest news from our map editors and drivers from across the world, from meetups to profiles to special announcements and more.

I’ll also be writing about Waze’s activity in various countries and other behind-the-scenes content.

Map editors and Waze drivers alike, please feel free to contact me at edon@waze.com with any stories you’d like me to cover, or just to say hello :)

To kick-off this new exciting chapter for the Waze blog, we’ll also be revealing the international record-holders for map-editing.

Can you name the top 3 editors who have . . .
1. Edited the most street-names?

2. Edited the most house numbers?

3. Recorded the most roads?

Place your bets – and watch this space for more questions. We’ll be revealing the answers in the days and weeks to come.

Big news! You can help bring gas prices and toll roads info to your country!

Thursday, July 19th, 2012

Exciting news today for users in countries where community-updated gas prices haven’t been rolled out yet. Now you guys can actively help bring these features to your country faster… Maybe even as soon as a few weeks from now!

The first step in unveiling gas price features is to have enough gas station on the map. And that’s where you come in!

Starting today, our map editor allows you to add gas station locations to the map (available in all countries except US and Canada).

To add a gas station in the map editor, simply add a landmark and select type: Gas Station. You can then define the rest of its properties, such as brand name and address. (Hey, never edited the map before? It’s a cinch, just watch this).

In some countries, you’ll see that the editor is missing a list of local gas brands. Not to worry though. You can help by submitting your country’s gas brands here.

But wait, that’s not all!

You can now help Wazers in your country avoid toll roads too, with another new feature available today in the map editor. Mark toll roads in your area by selecting road segments and flagging them “Toll Road” in segment properties.

As soon as a road is specified a toll road, it will immediately be marked as such in the app, improving Wazers’ routing options. Then, once the community in each country lets us know that all of its toll roads are mapped, we’ll release an ‘avoid toll roads’ setting in the app, so Wazers can choose if they’d like to stick to toll-free routing on a regular basis.

Hows that for two big wins today? Now, more than ever, Waze can help you save time and cash on the road.

User Stories: Waze Helped Me Get Home

Friday, July 6th, 2012

Indianapolis Map

Waze has always been committed to saving you at least five minutes on your daily drive. So it makes us extremely happy when we hear stories like these. (more…)

Waze Hits 20 Million Users!

Thursday, July 5th, 2012

Hooray! We’re proud to announce that we just passed a pretty big milestone. As of today, there are over 20 Million Wazers world-wide!  Its been an impressive 2012 for us so far as we’ve doubled our Wazer population from 10 Million to 20 Million in only 6 months. This month alone, 1.8 Million Wazers have joined the community. That’s some wicked awesome growth! Equally impressive, to date, over 3.2 billion miles have been driven with Waze. Yes we’re in the billions. Wow!

Of course, we’d be remiss not to thank our wonderful community (each and every 20 million of you) and the fantastic Waze editors who work so hard on improving the Waze maps. Without a good map the numbers would have never grown as much. And just wait wonderful Wazers because we’re working on a great new version the best from us is still yet to come!