Waze

LA Is Turning Wazers Into Hit-and-Run Vigilantes

Waze works by requiring its users to manually report what they see on the road: traffic jams, potholes, speed traps. Now the City of Los Angeles will ask its Wazers to be vigilant about reporting one more thing: The vehicles possibly involved in hit-and-run collisions. Much like the Amber Alerts which are delivered to phones…

Police Are Trying to Undermine Waze With a Deluge of Phony Cop Sightings

Cops are fighting Waze over a feature that lets users pinpoint where they’ve seen officers on a map, thus using the crowdsourced traffic app to avoid getting in trouble with the law. Now police in Miami are subverting the app by filling it with loads of bogus police sightings. NBC in Miami reports that hundreds…

Some Police Think Google’s Waze App Helps Would-Be Cop Killers

Waze’s community-curated real-time traffic network includes keeping tabs on nearby five-o. And cops aren’t very happy about it, claiming it makes it easier to stalk the police. The Associated Press reports that a few U.S. sheriffs are accusing Waze of aiding cop stalking and even being a potentially powerful tool for would-be cop killers since…

Is It Really Possible To Trick Waze To Keep Traffic Off Your Street?

Anyone who has used Waze to navigate a soul-crushing commute in Los Angeles can see just how the community-driven navigation app works: On any given night, the app might direct hundreds of cars down an obscure street to avoid a crash or gridlock nearby. Now, residents of quiet neighborhoods are pissed at Waze, and apparently…

Hackers Can Now Create Fake Traffic Jams

A couple of Israeli students figured out a way to create fake traffic jams using the popular, Google-owned Waze GPS app. And while it sounds silly at first, these kinds of infrastructure hacks could have serious consequences as we depend more and more on data to help us get around town. The Waze hack is…

Waze Has New Celebrity Voice Navigation

Who wouldn’t want Kevin Hart yelling accurate but somehow disparaging directions at them while they’re trying to drive? No one. So Waze made a deal with Universal Pictures to get celebrities talking at us while we’re lost. Kevin Hart from Real Husbands of Hollywood is the first celebrity voice and did the Waze recording to…

After its acquisition of Waze this past June, Google announced this morning that it is deploying real time incident reports from Waze users to Google Maps mobile and apps users. Waze users can now search with Google, too. And if you’re into mapmaking, the Waze Map Editor now includes Google Street View. [Google and Waze]

Why Google Buying Waze Will Keep You Out of Gridlock Hell

As anticipated, Google expanded its burgeoning global empire on Tuesday by buying the Israeli social traffic and mapping service Waze. You might recognize Waze as the GPS app with a soul. Pretty soon you’re going to know it as the thing that made your commute bearable once and for all. Waze’s entire ethos revolves around…

After no small amount of speculation, it seems Goggle will finally acquire Waze for $1.3 billion.

Apparently, Google wants to start a bidding war with Facebook over who gets to buy Waze. That sounds like a lot of fun, actually. Who’s got more billions? [Bloomberg]

Who Knew Rush Hour in L.A. Could Look So Nice?

If you’ve ever lived in Southern California, the mere mention of rush hour will inspire fear and dread in the hearts of residents. And yet, when you watch this 24-hour visualization of LA traffic, created by the Gray Area Foundation and Nik Hansellman for GPS app maker Waze, those feelings cease to exist. Go figure!…

Waze Turn-By-Turn App Lets You Play Pac-Man With Your Car

Free, crowd-sourced turn-by-turn app Waze might not navigate quite as well as the Navigons and Telenavs of the world, but it’s got one killer feature that they don’t: cherries, to chomp with your car. The cherries (and various other icons) are part of Waze’s new “Road Goodies” program, which essentially turns the navigation service—which has,…

Free Waze App Turns GPS Navigation Into a Social Cellphone Game

The problem with most turn-by-turn navigation apps for cellphones is that they are outrageously expensive. Not so with Waze. In fact, the app is totally free—and it even turns the driving experience into a fun little game. https://gizmodo.com/iphone-navigation-app-battlemodo-part-ii-the-best-che-5367026 Click to view The video explains the service in detail but, in a nutshell, Waze maps are…

The Week In iPhone Apps: Makin’ Music, Chompin’ Ghosts

This week in the unseasonably entertaining App Store: Another bizarrely amazing music app; free turn-by-turn directions of questionable reliability; a fat man on a tightrope; an interesting take on the classic-est of classics; and a treat for our dear developers. Pac-Mac Remix: This is an official, sanctioned Pac-Man remake, and accordingly a pretty good one.…