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User Stories: “Waze Saved Our Lives!”

Posted on December 2, 2012 by Daniel

The phrase “you’re a lifesaver” is one we’ve humbly grown accustomed to hearing whenever a driver tells us how Waze saved them 5 or 10 minutes on their daily commute. But we never thought to take it literally — until now.

Earlier this week, a young mom from Michigan and her family were driving on the I-75 just south of Flint when a user-report alerted her of a car pulled over on the side of the road. The car, situated just at the highway’s split with US23, had missed its exit to the 23 and, unexpectedly, drove back across two lanes, in the middle of traffic, in order to get back to the exit it missed.

Driving at 75 miles per hour, the Wazer attempted to avoid the car by switching lanes, to no luck. Finally, they braced themselves and hit the brakes — hard.

“Your app and my fellow app users just saved my life!” Theresa R posted on our Facebook page. “My cousin is luckily a trained military truck driver [and] she just saved my life, my daughter’s life, and my husband’s life all because of this app!”

That story gives us the chills. Do any of you Wazers have any similar, perhaps less dramatic, experiences to share?

When Robin Met Waze . . .

Posted on November 26, 2012 by Daniel

If you thought our roundup of third-party apps with Waze integration was cool, then you’ll love this!

Robin, the Android app that serves as “your personal eyes-free assistant on the road,” has incorporated Waze into its latest update.

For those of you who don’t know, Robin “The Siri Challenger” is a great tool for finding local places, real-time parking, weather, your Twitter news and much more.

Now Robin users can navigate to any of their desired locations using Waze. After downloading Robin, you’ll be prompted the first time you ask to navigate somewhere whether or not you want to drive there with Waze, after which it’ll be the default app for all your drives.

Besides being a voice proxy to navigation, Robin also offers local search, hands-free texting, voice scheduling of reminders/alarms, email narration, a “personal interactive radio” (news, general and personal, from Robin’s News Room), narration of social feeds, and even posting to Facebook by voice.

Still not impressed? Robin can also tell you jokes to keep you entertained behind the wheel.

Oh, and in case you’re harboring any dreams of being a secret agent . . .

3 Useful Apps For Your Daily Driving

Posted on November 21, 2012 by Daniel

Did you know that third party apps can integrate Waze into their mobile experience? We’ve scoped out 3 apps that could be a helpful addition to your daily routine, from finding restaurants to locating local businesses to ride-sharing.

Ness
Ness Dining Guide, an app that offers users personalized recommendations on restaurants and other spots, recently incorporated Waze into their latest release.

The app recommends to users a host of options – from bars to nightlife scenes, to where they should vacation next. Now any of Ness’s users can get directions to their preffered restuarents with a simple “tap” — using Waze!

Localscope
Localscope is a “location browser” for your iPhone that helps you find great local businesses. The app aims to be “a window to your world,” that allows you to discover places, people and information around you using geo-tagged data from multiple local search engines, social networks, and other apps. Once you choose your location on Localscope, you can navigate there using Waze.

SideCar
Other cool apps featuring Waze functionality include SideCar, a new ride-sharing service that turns private cars into taxis. A whole new approach to carpooling, SideCar is an app people can use to find nearby drivers who have signed up to provide rides through the service. Drivers can then navigate to their desired location using Waze.

Have a creative idea on how to use Waze in your app? Any and all developers are invited to access the Waze map with these instructions on our website.

Have you seen Waze integrated anywhere cool recently? Let us know!

5 Waze to Take the Headache out of the Holidays

Posted on November 19, 2012 by Michal

Hey Wazers-

You know what time it is…Food, Family, and Friday (black Friday that is). Those are all wonderful reasons to travel home, but also reasons you need to make sure you use the right tool to make sure you get the most out of the holidays! Here’s a list of waze we’re going to help take the headache out of the holidays:

1. Family road tripping- Leave plenty of extra time for travel, and make sure to use Waze to avoid traffic getting home. Your family will thank you! Let them follow your route and ETA so they don’t worry.

2. Hoping to beat the Black Friday retail rush? Use Waze to make sure you don’t miss the on local shopping center specials because you got stuck on the freeway. Outsmart other shoppers buy finding alternate routes if they exist.

3. Need that last minute turkey? Make sure to use Waze too check the traffic around your local specialty foods store- nobody likes cold turkey. See how many others have checked-in with Waze Local Search featuring Yelp, FourSquare, Bing and more!

4. Hosting a party? Follow your Facebook friends to know when they’ll arrive so you know when to set the table.

5. Save money by making sure to check out Waze retailers. Take it a step further and retailer yourself! Go to http://biz.waze.com to figure out how to offer wazers the best deals on last minute supplies!

Have a good one, on us!

Sincerely, TeamWaze

Posted in Uncategorized.

Community Built Add-ons and Extensions for Map Editing

Posted on November 15, 2012 by Daniel

We’ve told you all about the latest version of our map editor, now we want to open your eyes to some useful map editing tools.

When looking for the best tools to enhance map editing, look no further than the resources developed by members of the Waze map editing community itself. The resourceful bunch have coded and patched a crop of add-ons that make map editing on the world map editor a far more seamless experience.

Just last month, US-based editor mike-bronner released a Safari extension, a web toolbar, for the Waze map editor. The toolbar optimizes map editing by allowing editors to add segments, make edits, zoom, logout and as well as make other modifications to the map.

It also incorporates a tool developed by UK editor timbones (“WME Color Highlights”), which allows users to adds colors to road segments to show their status, and to landmarks to show their type. Highlighting segments can be useful to map editors aiming to see locked and un-named roads. (Forum)

By increasing the ease of map editing, these add-ons, and others, are making editing a quicker and more enjoyable activity.

Other community plugins, extensions and tools include:

The simplified “original” tool for map-editing, this extension provides a table documenting the country, state, city and street names present in each screen you edit.

Street to River, a script designed to hep to easily create river and railroad landmarks in the WME. If you’re using Firefox, you’ll need the Greasemonkey add-on. (Forum)

The Livemap Navigation addon, which allows for a a list of navigation instructions to be shown on the left-hand side while searching for directions via the Waze Livemap. This is particularly useful in helping editors debug routes, although it is useful to drivers as well. It also requires the Greasemonkey add-on for Firefox users. (Forum)

Are there any other add-ons you use, or would like to see developed, while map editing?

UPDATE: Real-Time Gas Prices in 8 More Countries

Posted on November 12, 2012 by Daniel

UPDATE: The real-time gas price feature is also available for Wazers in France, Slovakia and Sweden.

Great news for Wazers across Europe and New Zealand!

Drivers in 8 more countries can now navigate to cheaper gas prices. The gas station feature, which enables drivers to navigate to cheap gas prices, is now available in Hungary, Germany Lithuania, Russia, Finland, New Zealand, Estonia and Cyprus.

With this feature, drivers in these countries will now be able to update each other on the latest gas prices at various stations on or along their route. When the whole community gets involved, drivers should be able to quickly locate the most inexpensive gas stations and save a bit of money to offset the rising cost of fuel.

We know that high gas prices affect many of you each day — and hopefully the addition of this feature should help.

Countries that have already launched the gas station feature include Italy, the United Kingdom, Spain, Latvia, Brazil, the United States, Belgium and the Netherlands.

The launch of this feature has been entirely dependent on crowdsourced information by the map editing community. Currently, more than 130,000 gas stations have been added to the Waze map by map editors, making the release of the feature available in more and more countries worldwide.

Remember — to keep prices updated while on the road, all you need to do is hit “report” and then “gas prices” each time you enter a gas station to verify that prices are accurate. Do your part and help the community beat the high costs of gas.

Are high gas prices a problem in your region?

Goodbye ‘Cartouche,’ Hello Sleek New Map Editor

Posted on November 9, 2012 by Daniel

It’s a new dawn for the Waze map editing community! For our veteran map editors, yesterday marked the retirement of the original Waze map editor, affectionately known as the “Cartouche.” In its place is a newly unveiled version of Waze’s World Map Editor (WME), with tons of new exciting updates bound to please our map editors and attract new editors alike.

Even while in beta mode, the Waze Map Editor has proven more a popular tool for attracting new map editors and solving map problems. In the United States, for example:

  • The map editing community has resolved an astonishing 35,000 of the 37,000 map problems detected by our system during the last 30 days. (Learn how our system automatically detects map problems here.)

As we disclosed last month, the number of edits and new editors is rising as well:

  • The United States saw a 36% rise in map edits performed on the new world map editor from September to October.
  • The rate of new editors signing up rose by 28% in the United States month-over-month.

We hope our official new version will keep up this trend.

Changes in the newly unveiled WME include, but are not limited, to:

Play Mode. Encourage your friends to try out map editing if they haven’t because we’ve made it easier than ever to jump in! With the new “play mode” function, editors can try out fun editing tasks such as adding a road, gas station, landmark and more, without saving their changes.

A new design featuring a full-screen layout. Optimized for all screen sizes, now you can edit without any distractions.

A sleeker, more minimally-designed left side column. With a decreased font size and a cleaner look, making each individual edit becomes a far more seamless experience.

The ability to edit alternate street names and house number editing. Functions such as these, and several others, were previously only available on the “Cartouche.”

Faster, smoother editing across web browsers, already noted by users on our forum.

. . . and even more!

Before we say our tearful goodbye to the original map editor, let’s thank our community of stellar beta testers who made this awesome version release of the new and improved map editor a reality! Thanks guys!

So, what do you think about the new map editor?

Introducing Waze Ads: Bringing You the Most Relevant Local Merchants and Big Brand Stores Along Your Route

Posted on November 7, 2012 by Daniel

Waze is all about giving you a snapshot of the road at any given moment. We want you to be able to see all the activities going on around you or along your route — from traffic, hazards, and closures, to finding the best gas deals. Today, we’re introducing a new way for you to discover local businesses and special offers on your route as well.

Starting today, we’re giving businesses the ability to add themselves to the Waze map with the launch of our location-guided advertising platform. By giving businesses the chance to feature their locations and nearby offers, we’re hoping you’ll be able to spot some hidden gems on your daily route that you didn’t even know existed.

Merchants that advertise with Waze will appear alongside the existing businesses you see in your search results ordinarily, except that businesses can now pay to promote themselves in our results.

We don’t want to bombard you, so you’ll never see too many businesses crowded on the map at once. Instead, the algorithm that powers Waze Ads aims to bring you helpful selection of the various retailers around you on your daily drive. We’ve designed the system to fit into your daily driving experience seamlessly, so that the businesses you see can be useful while you take care of your errands or shopping needs.

We’re launching this today with nationwide brands and local businesses, including: Dunkin’ Donuts, Circle K MACS, Kum & Go, Wyndham Hotels, Jamba Juice, and P&G.

If you’re a business owner who would like to reach our community of 30 million drivers, then please come on in! Our self-serve platform allows small businesses to set, change, and measure their campaigns through http://biz.waze.com.

Last, but not least, to celebrate the launch, Waze is offering advertisers, brands, and vendors a $50 free trial on our new platform during the month of November.

We’re looking forward to hearing what you think!

UPDATE: East Coast Fuel Shortages

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Di-Ann

Let's work together to alleviate the fuel shortage on the east coast.

Earlier today we posted about the fuel situation in New Jersey. The shortages and loss of power left residents with no fuel or no access to fuel. In many instances, residents have had to wait hours in line for gas.

We commented on how Wazers in New Jersey are able to leave Chit-Chat messages informing nearby Wazers of fuel levels, fuel prices and wait time. We hope that by working together as a community, we can alleviate the fuel strain and continue the recovery.

We understand that several other areas are experiencing fuel shortages as well. We have received incoming tweets and messages from residents in Brooklyn, Staten Island, Long Island, The Bronx, Queens and other cities experiencing a shortage of fuel.

As you know, we’ve been working off of data given to us by The White House/ FEMA. We are all working hard to help as best we can. To other Wazers on the East Coast, how is the fuel situation in your city/town?

We can promise you that we’re working to provide information and support to the cities affected by the fuel shortage. But we need your help. The strength of Waze has always been the social and communal bond between Wazers. Now more than ever, we need to come together and help one another on the east coast.

We remind you, if you know of stations with fuel please leave a Chit-Chat message for nearby Wazers to see.

As always, our thoughts and prayers continue to be with the east coast.

Attention Wazers: Help Us Get Fuel To New Jersey Residents

Posted on November 3, 2012 by Daniel

Waze wants to help New Jersey residents find viable gas stations in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, but we need Wazers in the region to help.

After being contacted yesterday by The White House and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), we are trying to help bring fuel to New Jersey residents suffering from the shortages.

Many gas stations throughout the state do not have gas, while others have lost power. However, using the crowdsourced information YOU provide, New Jersey Wazers can work together and direct each-other to stations that have fuel.

You will notice that when you open Waze, you will see several pins at gas stations. If you could, please leave a Chit-Chat message letting others know the fuel levels, prices and how long the lines are at gas stations. This information will be relayed back to The White House and FEMA.

Thank you for your help and cooperation. Our thoughts and prayers continue to be with those affected by the hurricane.

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