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Waze - crowd sourced navigation

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Mark0:
Anyone used Waze?

http://world.waze.com

What are waze drivers building?

Waze is a social mobile application providing free turn-by-turn navigation based on the live conditions of the road.
100% powered by users, the more you drive, the better it gets. Join the community of drivers in your area today!
--- End quote ---

Here's also a video introduction: YouTube - Waze guided tour

It's a free navigator, with free map, traffic and warning info. The cool thing is that the map is dynamic, and one could actually contribute to it simply driving around, tracing new roads, or going to the online map editor and fixing things (only on the travelled routes).

They started in Israel some time ago, and now they claim to have the best map & traffic data for the region. On some countries they start providing a base map obtained trough some parteners, while in others they start with a blank canvas (like in Italy, currently).
I looked at it time some months ago and my zone was basically clear. I retried the other day, and found many streets around here, including some recent features / modifications that haven't showed up yet on the cartography from the usual suspects, Tele Atlas and Navteq.
Some friends from major cities (like Rome, or Milan) say that they are actually already using it for their commute, since the reaction times on changing traffic conditions are very good.

The actual navigation application is available for Android, iPhone, WM and Symbian (not sure for BlackBarry).

JavaJones:
Looks very cool, similar to an idea I had on the way home from work a few months ago. Not surprising it wasn't a unique idea. I'm glad to see this actually exists and, with time, it could become a major source of one-of-a-kind info, or at the least a great crowd-sourced aggregator of info like Wikipedia. I'll definitely keep my eye on it...

- Oshyan

Stoic Joker:
Oh goody, another reason for people in traffic to be on the phone...

JavaJones:
Having had more time to test it, it's pretty rough at present. Search doesn't work well, at least not for the specific addresses I tried, the map view is slow and clunky and doesn't always update, and features are not obvious. There's a lot of promise in this, but I think they could have avoided reinventing the wheel by leveraging an existing mapping service and laying their data on top, e.g. Google Maps API. That would help a lot with the "nothing in my area" feeling which really discourages use IMO, and would also mean their maps are driven by a major technology provider who will continue improving their maps systems and has a greater ability to provide good performance. By comparison Google Maps is very smooth...

P.S. Stoic, text message to this system from a user on the road... "Traffic is really heavy at 4th ave and... scratch that, accident at 4th ave and Lincoln, I just rear-ended someone." :P

- Oshyan

Mark0:
[...] by leveraging an existing mapping service and laying their data on top, e.g. Google Maps API.-JavaJones (March 22, 2010, 02:17 PM)
--- End quote ---

That could have been possible in some places, maybe specifically in the USA, but non everywhere. In the USA, Google have now his own cartography, so they can use it, share, etc. as they see fit in their strategies. Elsewhere, for example in Europe, Google use data licensed from Tele Atlas (and maybe Navteq), with some specific restrictions on the usage: turn by turn direction come to mind, for example, and that explain why Google Maps Navigation isn't available (officially) here.

Waze anyway does have some deal with other cartography providers; in some regions they used such data to draw a basic grid of unnamed roads.
But I think that their general idea is in facts to come up with new, user generated maps.

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