I just found out about
Waze three days ago and installed int on my iPhone, so I'm still testing it every time I hit the road. I really like the application and the possibilities it has. My opinion further got confirmed by a post on
Scobelizer where he has Waze on the list of companies to watch in 2010 on number 6.
Waze is crowdsourced mobile navigation software, both the traffic information and the map itself are created by the end-user. In my hometown that means that, as I'm the first user here, I have to pave various road myself because they are not in the map. After you have paved a road you can go to the online editor to make the cross-roads and name the streets.
As far as the crowdsourced traffic information work like a charm. I was driving around yesterday and I got notifications that light traffic was reported this was due to the fact that I was driving at 40km/h where 80km/h is allowed. It wasn't quit due to traffic but due to the
weather conditions.
Waze has still some bugs here and there, like stated above, also the editor on the site the Aerial view from the Netherlands is still missing and some other things, but getting in touch with
@waze on twitter and in my case I got help pretty soon with them fixing
foursquare integration.
Mobile clients are available for iPhone, Windows Mobile, Android and even Symbian.
My conclusion: Waze is definitely a service you need to try on your mobile device and it is free.
More company information about waze can be found in the
Crunchbase.
