Your routes will upload eventually, but due to the enormous increase in users (hundreds of %), there is a lot of data to send. Not only locations, but also speeds and whether roads were munched or not. If you're driving solely for the points, I can understand you're disappointed, but for the general idea of waze: it's getting better by the day. Every day I see more Wazers and the routing information gets better and better.

First of all, welcome to Waze! Most of the community share your thoughts/frustrations. I realize it's an unsatisfying hollow phrase, but those are known issues that need resolving (but other things get higher priority).

I want to go into one of your experiences:

Cave_Man wrote:The GUI said I was next to another wazer.... but there was nothing on the road near me.

I tried to find the discussion on the forum, but was unable to. This discussion describes the reason why Waze, by design, doesn't show the exact position of another user. The position is only updates every two minutes or so and always shows the old position. Furthermore it will not show the first and last parts of one's route (I believe it's 50/500yards), so if you enter your driveway, that will not be visible to others. All of this to protect your privacy and make sure Waze can never be used for stalking and worse. There is a growing crowd in the community that would like to have an option to make your more exact position available to specific people, e.g. your Facebook friends, but that's not on the drawing board yet.

Cave_Man wrote:The aim is social driving, but the whole system is geared around cartography! Perhaps a step back and design it around social driving with the added feature of cartography.

Aside from the technical discussion, it's all true, but social driving asks for a critical mass of users that asks for excellent routing algorithms based on a correct map, which is either expensive or takes a lot of editing. Since the latter is the solution of choice, you can defend that cartography is important. But it some sort of chicken-egg situation. I agree that you need to approach this from the bottom up.

Thanks to all for the words of encouragement, things are still looking good. The server loading is a bit of a concern, but not knowing its design I can assume its a central server that does everything. Based on that assumption, I dont believe this is a wise decision as why do I in the UK have to wait for someone in the USA's data to complete loading? .. it has no relevance to me. Perhaps decentralised Area processing can be done for locales that are relevant to each other. But alas, these things dont come for free. There are many powerful handsets in use, get them to do some work too!

Batch processing to me seems like a futile idea as you are converting a RANDOM event to a batch processing Event. Why not leverage off the RANDOMness of peoples driving/uploading and maximise this timing for processing of the data. Using this method you will spread the CPU usage over the period, instead of using 100% DB power at 1am when the batch processing is run.

Another method would be to optimise the database! I can tell you by looking at the Dashboard that the DB design is not the greatest I have seen.. you are asking how I know I bet... well the telltale signs are NaN; which means the DB doesnt even have the defaults loaded for the fields yet. Something that small shows me that perhaps the rest of the database is 'slapped together'; I could be wrong though and I am hoping to be proven wrong.
There are multiple ways to sort out a database, one other method is to Index the fields and then make sure your queries only do whats needed. (Dont return irrelevant data that is not used)

One of my specialities in years gone by was Vehicle tracking and fleet management, and processing of billions of records is not a big task when the database is used correctly. For example, do you use an application to 'insert in DB_Car set X=1' or is the native DB bulk importer used to get the GPS data in to a temporary table and then moved to live using a SQL query.

As for privacy, I really think that is a red-herring; I dont like my privacy being exported, but why bother showing a person who has gone down the road 5 minutes ago! .. just report his events then! (if there are any) just make it say '5 wazers on this road in 1hr' or something that could make it more useful to Joe Average. This way I can judge how reliable the events are on the segment of road.

Much appreciated
Richard

robin1979 wrote:

Cave_Man wrote: One of my specialities in years gone by was Vehicle tracking and fleet management, and processing of billions of records is not a big task when the database is used correctly. For example, do you use an application to 'insert in DB_Car set X=1' or is the native DB bulk importer used to get the GPS data in to a temporary table and then moved to live using a SQL query.

There are huge differences between spatial databases (especially when using a network model) and traditional databases. It really is a lot more complex than you are stating. Look at this:
http://portal.opengeospatial.org/files/?artifact_id=829 to see how different it is from traditional SQL.

Hi Robin,

I do agree at the large differences... but I am also aware of the basics of the system.. which is POINTS- NO-ONE uses the system without wanting a reward of points.. and I do mean NO-ONE in the strictest terms.
A spatial database is ideal for Geo-Data, but its absolutely rubbish for keeping a list of points accumulated in an easily understood manner (As shown right now as my dashboard has 0 points on it again)

Even complex problems are a series of simple problems - perhaps first principles and step back and look at the problem from another angle (As an engineer, I love the technical aspects; but as a joe user, I really cant be bothered what the technical reason is for my points disappearing)

The aim is social driving, but the whole system is geared around cartography! Perhaps a step back and design it around social driving with the added feature of cartography.

2 weeks later and using Waze like mad I am deleting the application

When the servers are not overloaded and/or badly designed , please feel free to send me an email and I will try again.

Waiting 3 days for points to reflect in the dashboard is absolutely PATHETIC. There is no excuse.

It was fun but the frustration outweighs its fun-factor.

Richard

Well the techno babbel was slightly interesting. At least the feedback was enthusiatic which counts for a lot.
I also am tiring of the experience slightly. I like rolling new roads but find it irritating that I am supposed to remember to switch it off when I get to established segments. I don't mind so much about the delays in my dashboard update, or care too much about 'points', but I wish there were more Wazers over here in the UK and more activity in general.
Roads which I rolled need to be rolled again as they seem to disappear after a few days.
Seeing other Wazers on the map is useless if they are ghost trails of users that were there 5 mins earlier. Getting traffic updates from 150miles away is also odd - but that might be the scarcity of reporting and will improve when there are more near me.

I don't use Waze yet for Navigation, just the community and for fun, because when I use Navigation I want it to be real-time, not 2hrs behind.

btw - it would be great if the Waze client could link to the Bluetooth activation - i.e. everytime my mobile connects to my car hands-free, it starts up.

I have a T-mobile/Orange HTC G1. I am going to change it for a HTC Desire HD as I quite like the Android experience. Wondering how I will manage without a keyboard though. Nice big screen for Waze though - I am not deleting it just yet - want to see how accurate traffic reports get. Seems that if you report a jam, Waze uses that report as a signal to track your speed and then update the road segment you are on with that? With so few Wazers so far, it seems I am reporting my journey myself

Some folks pinged me en-route this morning - no idea where they were as nothing showing on my Waze map. At what zoom do Waze avatars disappear.

The user avatars have a delay in the client/live map to avoid server overload as well as to preserve privacy to a degree. Something along the lines of 2-5 minutes I beliece.

The God delay is a source is frustration for most but once you're a bit more embedded you tend to forget about it. Having said that a double-pass as you suggested would increase server load and anything more than a once a day update to the cartouche could get a little irritating as an editor!

I presume you are on the international server, world.waze.com. the reason you have to login a second time on the forums is that they are held on the US server waze.com.
I do appreciate the login in general issue is a pain in the ass though! I can only hope it is being worked on or at least thought about!

Welcome to waze though, glad you found the start-up process so easy!


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