UPDATE: After acquiring Waze, Google is now integrating traffic reports, generated from the Waze app's users, into the Google Maps app. Still no signs of closing down Waze itself as there is no way to report incidents from Google's own app.
Google Maps Gets Waze Real-Time Traffic Reports | PC Mag http://bit.ly/14yvehz
Your commute is probably boring and leaves you feeling unproductive. What if you could score points and compete with your friends just by driving? Waze aims to do just that and more. Waze, in the most basic sense, is a free turn by turn navigation service for iPhone, Android and Windows Phone. Two really great features give it a big leg up over the other options. First, it is a game where you get points for driving and finding road goodies. Second, it is a social navigation app. When you are playing the game, you are actually providing Waze with valuable information about road conditions, avearge speed, and additional map details. This information helps Waze to determine better directions for you and other drivers using the app. As you earn more points you rise in rank, relative to other Wazers, and are able to compare your road warrior status against your friends on Facebook who also use Waze. It is surprisingly addictive, expecially when you realize that you can play a Pac-Man style of game by driving over roads that require fresh data (your avatar turns into a Pac-Man and munches up the road). As you can tell, this is a very social way to approach GPS navigation. In addition to just passively providing data, you can also report traffic jams, speed traps and road hazards to warn other Wazers (you get points for those too).
I've been using the app now for a few weeks and am pretty happy with the results. Waze has been much better than Google Navigation at avoiding traffic jams and it provides surprisingly accurate ETAs when using the navigation. It only gets better as more people use it, so download it and start navigating better, together.
Download: http://www.waze.com/download/
