A great new version went live a couple of hours ago, and in it you’ll notice minimal UI changes but a few great new functionalities.

Here’s what it includes:

A contributors scoreboard

Finally! The scoreboard serves to put your points in context. With it you’ll see how you stack up against others in your state/country – and worldwide – according to rank and points.

You can view a daily updated status report, showing top contributors for the current week, or an overall aggregated view. What’s cool is that it shows trends and mobility:  top contributing users in your state/country, plus who’s going up or down in rank.

As a global community, the part we like the best about the new scoreboard is the world view, where you’ll be able to see the top contributors worldwide. Note, however, that the initial release still hasn’t merged user databases, so the ‘All’  view won’t include the US and Canada for those outside of those countries, and for those in the US or Canada, the ‘All’ section will consist of the US and Canada only.  As you know the points system is new, so if find anything wrong with your points let us know. We hope to merge the user base data bases soon and provide a unified ‘World’ view. We’ll also add other cool functionalities in next version, so stay tuned!

Personalized alternative routes

Since waze is geared towards commuting and everyday driving in places you already know, we think that the ’standard’ system-calculated routes don’t quite cut it. You already know the different alternative routes for getting to work or home, and you have your specific little reasons why they are YOUR preferred routes, not necessarily the fastest or shortest. The question you usually are asking yourself at the start or close of the day is which one is best right now, right?

So, we’ve introduced personalized alternative routes. Waze will learn the different routes you take to frequent destinations and will tell you which one is most optimal at any given moment. Until waze learns your preferred routes, or if you are driving to non-frequent destinations, waze will show you the  alternative routes,  based on real time traffic,  which is also cool, but not as cool as the personalized ones

How can you make sure waze learns your routes quickly? Well, first off, it takes two to three times traveling each route for waze to learn it. Make sure you start waze and program in your destination point before you start the drive. As you can tell this is a pretty complex feature, and it may take a bit of time to fully mature, so please bear with us. And as always, your feedback is essential. Please leave any thoughts or questions you might have in the comments section, or email alpha@waze.com.

Tell A friend

Now wazers on iPhone can tell their friends about waze with a convenient email, ready to send to your contacts. Click the arrow on the bottom right of your screen, then the small envelope, to enter your friends’ email addresses.

That's Yael figuring out how to make the perfect product

We’ve just submitted a new version to the iPhone Appstore and, similar to our newest Android release, this new version will have some very significant performance updates. You’ll notice that all functions will perform much faster than before and since the update is designed to use less resources, running waze won’t drain your battery like it might have in the past. We’d be happy to hear what you think, and if you notice the difference…

In addition, the new iPhone version will include the Ping-a-Wazer feature, too. We’ve already seen folks having a lot of fun with it on Android, but again, a reminder – though you can ping a wazer and it may appear as a private conversation, it’s not. All chit-chats are publicly viewable, so use your best judgment, wazers! It may take about a week +/- for approval from the Appstore, but it shouldn’t be too long now and we’ll update you here on the blog once it’s good to go…

Beyond the stuff that’s coming down the pipeline in the near future, we’re also thinking ahead and having plenty of meetings (in our white lab coats, of course) to discuss how to take waze to the next level, so make sure to stay tuned…

And lastly, if you didn’t already know it, the waze badge on Foursquare is now up for the taking (and has been for a few weeks). All you have to do is check in to anywhere on Foursquare via waze three times and – poof!- it’s yours…

Happy to announce that we’ve got a new version up on the Android Market, to be followed soon by a similar version  on the iPhone Appstore – more info on that, once we have it…

First off, this version has some significant  performance improvements including way better UI responsiveness and lower memory use. We hope that you’ll notice a big difference the next time you start wazing…

But the fun bit is this – we have a cool new feature to unveil: Ping-a-Wazer, where you can ping other wazers to get the ‘word on the street’ on what’s happening in other locations. Just look for the wazers with a blue bubble on top of their avatars – this means that they agree to be pinged.

Important to note: If you’d like to make yourself available to be pinged, too, visit the profile section, under settings, and click ‘I agree to be pinged’. Without changing these settings, you will not be shown as available for chat.

Note that for safety, just like with other waze reporting features, typing is disabled while the car is in motion, but go ahead and ping a wazer before you set out on the road, at those annoyingly long red lights, or from the shoulder of the road – and have fun with it!

Lastly, though your message will pop up on the screen of the user you pinged, make sure to keep in mind that all conversations are publically viewable under ‘chit chat’ – so be good! 

Foursquare Integration – We’re super excited to announce our integration with Foursquare, a popular new location-based geo-gaming app that’s getting a lot of buzz. Users of both apps can now ‘check in’ to various locations on Foursquare via the waze client – a feature that’s we hope you’ll really like! If you’re not already familiar with Foursquare, you’re definitely gonna want to check this one out…

‘Road Goodies’-  As you know, waze recently added ‘road goodies’ – small icons worth bonus points – and the just-released holiday version features adorable wintery ‘road goodies’ including snowflakes (worth 50 points) and candy canes (worth 100 points), scattered all over the map.

Holiday Treasure Hunt – We also have a holiday treasure hunt running, where little treasure chests scattered around the map will open to reveal real-world prizes! (See the next blog post for more details…)

Multiple Language Support –  And last, but not least, the new holiday version also includes Spanish and Italian support, both on the client interface as well as the audio navigation prompts. These translations were fully undertaken by waze community members, and we’re turning to the rest of you to help out with the waze translation project. Check out the waze Wiki for more information on how to get involved. We’re currently working on Bosnian, Czech, Dutch, Finnish, French, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Russian – but feel free to add any language that you wanna be wazing in!

And the highlights this time:

• Foursquare Integration - A very cool integration with Foursquare that so many of our users have asked for allowing you to checkin directly from the waze ‘Report Menu. Ain’t it a cool combination of 2 mobile location based apps with a gaming twist?
• Support for multiple languages - All translated by waze community members!!! thanks everybody for the hard work. Anyone interested in translating to more languges is welcome. Visit the forum for more info.
• A broad selection of map color schemes (for those who insisted a map is a map and it should have colors…) . Would love to hear your thoughts and preferences.
• More automated road tweets you can send right from within waze
• Bug fixes and more…

We submitted a new version to the iPhone Appstore a couple of weeks ago. It should be approved and become available any day now and  includes a lot of great features and bug fixes – plus, there’s also a very cool surprise feature, especially for those of you addicted to road munching…. that’s all we can say at this point

Here are the main features coming out in this version:

*  Quick access to your iPod

*  Navigate to an address in your contact book

*  Landscape view

*  More control over what appears on the map

*  Bring up top bar on tap

*  Define which layers will appear on map

*   View nearest wazer & click on wazer to view their details (joining date, distance, points, rank)

*   Crowns for high scoring area managers and map editors

*   Ability to set preference for dotted routes

*   List view of driving directions

*  AND LASTLY… A SURPRISE FEATURE AND CONTEST FOR THE ROAD MUNCHING ADDICTS AMONG US!!!

Wazers nearby and wazer details screenshot, below…

The waze map is constantly improving and really starting to shape up – thanks to more and more people who are getting involved and helping us make the maps of their hometowns better.

This is also a good chance to give a big kudos to some of our top notch map editors: Fitch, hodgie2005, sstair, ryman1, seppesai, dougm, kasrhp and Meister! Keep up the good work!

We are now starting to appoint area managers; an area manager has more privileges and permissions in his specific area of expertise (for example, your city or neighborhood).