Waze

ToxicBunny

Oi! Leave me out of this...
Joined
Apr 8, 2006
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Crimetown
Right,

Just found this whilst trawling around for interesting things.

Social based, turn-by-turn navigation system for the iPhone, and soon Android phones.

The maps are mostly incomplete in SA because the community is still small, but the more of us who use and update the maps the better the service will become.

I reckon we should all start using it :)

www.waze.com
 
Wouldn't they be better served by piggybacking on OpenStreetMap? It's hard enough getting proper maps for anything outside an urban area on OSM anyway without some other project splitting the attention.
 
Ah, sorry. They have a "business plan."

Waze is letting the community build the maps, but the community won't own the maps.
 
Fair enough comments, I hadn't looked too deeply into the whole backend of it.

I just like the idea in general, and it could be useful.
 
How many people on myBB use this app? It's extremely useful for traffic :) The more people that use it the better...And its FREE!
 
It is also available for Android so I will also give it a shot.

Trapster is also another I have to check out.
 
I used to use it, was an area manager for most of joburg, but I got immensely frustrated with the map editing interface. It was just frigging horrible. Not sure if they've improved it at all...
 
I contemplated using it when it was first released but the lack of support/userbase in SA at the time was a bit limiting. Wondering if that's improved? Also now my Android phone's 2 years old and getting sluggish, might try again when I upgrade
 
Busy getting all my friends to start using it. Certainly does get more useful when lots of people are traveling the same route.

Spread the word people :D
 
Hear the interview on the radio about it - Waze have partnered (actually the other way around) with the company behind the Matrix Car-Tracker system... They are therefore also anonymously throwing data into the mix, that is obtained from users that have the car-tracker installed... The whole system obviously depends on critical mass - and including the car-tracker info is a neat work-around...

Tried it yesterday - seems to work well, and is easy to use.
Deleted it this morning.

Past 2 months have seen me staying well-below my allowable daily data limit (I use the Data Usage app, that works out how much I have left of my 500mb package, and how much I can, and are in fact, using per day). In the 24 hours of having Waze installed on my phone, my data consumption saw a huge spike (almost 60mb)- to the point where I would have run out of data 4 days prior to month end, had I maintained those levels...

Great app - but be careful how you set it up - it seems to be thirsty data-wise (battery wise, it slurps as well, but that's unavoidable)... Of course, I'm on Vodacom's entry level iPhone package - for those who have more data (or money) to spend - it's a no-brainer.

My 2-cents.
 
Past 2 months have seen me staying well-below my allowable daily data limit (I use the Data Usage app, that works out how much I have left of my 500mb package, and how much I can, and are in fact, using per day). In the 24 hours of having Waze installed on my phone, my data consumption saw a huge spike (almost 60mb)- to the point where I would have run out of data 4 days prior to month end, had I maintained those levels...

I think you shouldn't give it up that easily. The first day is bound to use more data, since it has to do the initial download of map data. After that it is, to a large extent, using cached data. I reckon you'd find a significant drop-off in data usage if you travel similar routes each day.
 
I think you shouldn't give it up that easily. The first day is bound to use more data, since it has to do the initial download of map data. After that it is, to a large extent, using cached data. I reckon you'd find a significant drop-off in data usage if you travel similar routes each day.

You might be right - would be interested to hear what the others say over time... What swung me was that plenty of data-use appeared to happen after I had arrived at work, and closed the app... I since noticed there is a "stop" button in the settings section, that might need to get turned off... But it still didn't make sense that data was used during the course of the day...
 
Well...I gave this a spin today. Was rather nice....it looked like I was the only one on the N3 at the time...kinda lonely! lol.

I am using it on Moto RAZR though. It does use a bit too much battery for my liking...went from 100% to 90% in 23 mintues of using it. Not too bad I guess but could be better. It did show heave traffic on the N3/M1 North......but did not redirect me.....so not sure if that function actually works.
 
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