Slashdot Mirror

Waze waze waze. Why use anything else?

Waze volunteer editors really do want to make the map accurate. They go off Google Street View, which is only updated every few years on secondary streets. So if your signs were added more recently than that, they will not have a good way to know unless you tell them.

You can contact map editing volunteers directly in two ways:.
1) If you have Waze, while somewhere on the street in question, tap the orange Report button in the lower right of the screen, tap Map Issue, then select the correct category and in the comment section type in what you want done to the map.
2) Join the local Waze forums, find the forum for your state, and post there.

Ultimately, I hope this affects your decision on whether to purchase a home on a through street in the future.

Why send a letter? You can mark it as "private road" in the editor at https://www.waze.com/editor

So anyhow this lame ass solution would be a great thing for mapping apps, as large sections of developments and towns become terra incongnita, where no one is allowed to map to people that live along the "private road".

Why send a letter?
You can mark it as "private road" in the editor at https://www.waze.com/editor

Actually this is not the first time I've read about this. People that live on residential streets that are close to major highways have had problems with Waze and the like routing way more cars through their streets than it was designed for. They design residential streets for a typical traffic flow and not for a lot of cars bypassing traffic on a regular basis. Imagine living on one of these streets and having hundreds of cars come down there daily, when it was never designed for that and thus making your quiet residential road into a high traffic road.
A quick google search turns up lots of stores and people complaining about this.
http://kalw.org/post/driving-a...
https://www.waze.com/forum/vie...
http://www.latimes.com/opinion...
https://www.usatoday.com/story...

I didn't mention privacy, which is a whole can of worms in itself. My main concern is the cost-benefit of having the government develop a massive new infrastructure to accommodate the collection of this data, and then having a system in place for billing and disputes. I think the cost-benefit for exactly measuring usage vs. the "good enough and cheap" method of using statistical models to decide where people drive comes out in favor of the latter.

A lot of what you list as potential benefits have other solutions which may be far cheaper. For instance, once everyone is being billed for usage anyway, it would be relatively trivial to replace EZ-Pass with license plate readers which bill your account. Statistical information about road usage could be gleaned by working with existing companies who collect such data, like Google and Apple... why build a parallel, redundant system when this data already exists? Potholes are already reported by mainstream apps like Waze - you can go on waze.com (the live map) right now and see every pothole reported in your area, no additional cost to the government at all.

GPS is a neat idea, but I think 90% or more of what you seek can be done more cost effectively through existing (or slightly modified) infrastructure.

The built-in apps on the car don't always give you updates on traffic, and they most certainly don't give you updates on the locations of police.

Waze does.

There are long threads in vehicle forums, dedicated to hacking the OS of the console, so people can add their *own* apps and navigation systems.

Also, there's something very creepy about driving along, and hearing "Caution! Toll booth ahead!" coming out of your speakers, when you aren't using navigation at all.

Which is just one of the many reasons why forum modders work so hard to dump the stock OS.

Waze has methods of dealing with this. It's called a private installation...

https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Pri...

But we don't just go putting them anywhere arbitrarily. We rely on local governments and DOTs to tell us where to put them. How? By determining if it's a private road or if there are regulatory signs prohibiting through traffic.

So if the homeowners don't want traffic routed through their neighborhood they need to go to their local government and get that done. Then soon as that's legally accomplished, then us editors for Waze will take the steps to prevent through routing through the neighborhood.

The cities need to sue Waze.

No. The city needs to put up a sign that says no through traffic and us Waze editors will make it a private installation. https://wiki.waze.com/wiki/Pri...

The article made no mention on whether the homeowner checked the Waze Map Editor to make sure his and the surrounding roads were marked correctly. For example, a road marked as a Primary Street type will be favored by the algorithms over a road marked as a Street type.
If the information is wrong, then fix it yourself, and change the routes of thousands of people. This is the correct way to combat inappropriate Waze routes: Make sure Waze's map data match the quality and capacity of the carefully laid out roadways. If the roadway capacities are not laid out well, then your problem is not Waze.

The article made no mention on whether the homeowner checked the Waze Map Editor to make sure his and the surrounding roads were marked correctly. For example, a road marked as a Primary Street type will be favored by the algorithms over a road marked as a Street type.
If the information is wrong, then fix it yourself, and change the routes of thousands of people. This is the correct way to combat inappropriate Waze routes: Make sure Waze's map data match the quality and capacity of the carefully laid out roadways. If the roadway capacities are not laid out well, then your problem is not Waze.

Waze is actually better, because you can edit the map yourself and fix it. Not that you should have to, but at least it's an option. You do have to have the appropriate access level to edit main streets and highways, but there are usually plenty of people online with access who can help you with things (see live chat). It also helps if you can point them to google street view to clearly show the problem.

I've made several small edits to address locations, street names, and turn restrictions. They show up in app after Waze does a map dump (about every week, if I remember correctly).

See: https://www.waze.com/editor

These are all things the service can and do monetize.

I'm also sure that's just one avenue of monetization. Local government would probably pay money for that data in some processed form to work out where people speed the most, or where delays occur at times of the day and so on. And it probably feeds into Google's self-driving vehicle projects and other mapping related functionality. And simply by people using Waze they're denying the information to a competitors and thus increasing its value.

So yes it's commercial in nature. Waze users get a free satnav app but its one that monitors and monetizes them.

Because if you actually read what GP wrote you might notice that "waze" (which is not a dictionary word) sounds identical to "ways" (which is a dictionary word).

What if I want to launch waze or lyft? Those aren't dictionary words either, but they live on my smartphone along side Siri/Cortana/Hound etc.

I have some experience editing the Waze map, but I don't have edit rights in LA. Waze has algorithms that are *supposed* to prevent routes like that from being generated (that is, you aren't supposed to be routed onto a ramp then back onto the same freeway you exited from) but sometimes in more complicated situations it doesn't always work right. We've also recently been seeing issues with drivers being directed to turn right at a traffic light and make a u-turn rather than wait for a left turn arrow, but this was described as a bug rather than a feature (and I'd feel like a jerk for driving like that).

Actually, looking at the roads in the Waze Map Editor (login required) I see something that *might* trick the routing server into thinking that the section of the 405 you exited from is a different freeway from the section you merged back on to, but I'd have to ask someone with more experience to take a look.

Waze also has an in-app feature to report a map issue from the reports screen if you are given a funny route; the report will log debug information so that an editor can review the issue.

You seem to have missed some news stories.

NYPD Cop Killer Used App to Track Police Movements Since Early December

NYPD Cop killer Ismaaiyl Brinsley was using a traffic app called Waze to track law enforcement's movements, NYC Alerts tweeted on Monday. According to an available screenshot, Brinsley was tracking two officers who were almost 4 miles away from him in Staten Island at 10:44 PM EST since the beginning of December.

Except that, as already stated, Waze doesn't track police. It only supports reporting a parked police car (or any other object/hazard). You could over time collect and analyze data from the reported police locations to determine when and where they tend to be, but that's well beyond the capability of the app alone, and still isn't even "tracking" in the sense implied in the article. The very next sentence after your quote even mentions this:

He thanks a friend of his on Instagram for pointing out the app is not "updated in real time" so it’s not that "reliable."

Voluntary, user-submitted, stationary reports in a traffic app are a far cry from realtime stalking ability. https://www.waze.com/livemap/ is a copy of the data that the app uses. The app shows when the item was reported and how many times another user verified the info (as shown in the article's screenshot), but there's essentially no detailed info in the report, as you can see. From one of the links in that article (http://www.breaking911.com/nypd-cop-killer-was-using-police-alert-app-to-track-cops/):

It is not clear whether Brinsley used the WAZE application as a police location tool for the murders or simply as the application is intended to be used.

There is no way that Waze could be used to track the two officers in the way the article implies, without another Waze user standing next to the officers making new reports as frequently as is required to meet the definition of "realtime".

Oh and just to let you know, you hitting "not there" only hides it for yourself without sufficient voting from others. You didn't actually think your single "not there" hid those reports from everyone did you?

This is pretty much just a mandatory opt-in to Waze. It's exactly what Waze does to route you.

Try Waze

They won't be able to make all cars retroactively do this, and unless all cars are using this the system is essentially worthless.

Woah, worthless?

You're telling me that if there are 2 self-driving cars on the road with 20 old non-network cars, there is no benefit for those 2 cars to coordinate?

What about the two smartcars coordinating their shared view of all of the "dumb" cars?
"Car 2, this is car 1. Dumbcar 249234 is next to me, in front of dumbtruck 2352 and has decreased speed from 72mph to 30mph and dropping."
"ACK Car 1, dumbtruck 2352 is directly in front of me. Reducing speed to increase space between myself and dumbtruck 2352, preparing to change to lane 3 when available"
*Obviously, they wouldn't talk like this, but could assign tags, coordinates & speeds, and this conversation could occur in milliseconds.

The idea is that the more sensors you have, the better the system works. Google and others are doing this with a single moving sensor platform now. A second one just makes both of them work better together, treating the non-connected cars as moving objects that must be avoided.

Looking at it another way, Waze is quite effective even with VERY low penetration rates. Imagine how much more effective Waze would be if every car made after 2018 was automatically plugged into it?

Some have already mentioned how you can beat speeding cameras by not speeding past them, so I won't reiterate. Other commenters complain about how silly speed limits are. I agree, but let's be practical.

For the time being, we're going to have speed enforcement. The public sea change necessary to eliminate that isn't going to happen any time soon. If we must have nannies running around, wasting time and money, who are making sure all the little kiddies are following playground rules, we might as well have machines doing it. Machines that can't prove our identities in court, and don't doll out points that adversely affect our license status and help insurance companies jack up our premiums.

We've got countermeasures (pick your favorite: Waze and Trapster) against these cameras that are legal in all states (unlike radar detectors), and, if you happen to get caught by one you've missed, your driving privileges aren't put in jeopardy.

tl;dr: less cops, more cameras.

They could have purchased TomTom, for example and had everything up and running immediately.

I think it's a bit more complicated than that. From Apple's mapping attribution page:

© 2006-2012 TomTom
Business listings data © Acxiom, 2012.
Map data © AND.
Property parcel data for USA. © CoreLogic Inc., 2012.
Satellite imagery data © DigitalGlobe, 2012.
Map and postal data © DMTI, 2012. This software contains Postal Code OM Data copied by Apple under a sub-license from DMTI Spatial Inc., a party directly licensed by Canada Post Corporation. The Canada Post Corporation file from which this data was copied is dated 2012.
Business listings data © Factual 2012.
Map data © Getchee, 2012.
© INCREMENT P CORP., 2012, http://www.incrementp.co.jp/gc01info/e/legal01.html.
Map data © Intermap, 2012.
Map data © LeadDog, 2012.
Business listings data © Localeze, 2012.
Mapping data for Australia and New Zealand. © MapData Services Pty Ltd., 2012, PSMA http://www.nowwhere.com.au/lic/NowWhereLic.htm.
Map data © MDA Information Systems, Inc., 2012.
Neighborhood data © Urban Mapping, 2012.
Map data © 2012 Waze.
âoeReviews from Yelpâ Yelp, 2012.
(CanVec)
© Department of Natural Resources Canada. All rights reserved.
http://www.geogratis.gc.ca/geogratis/en/index.html
(CGIAR-CSI SRTM)
CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information, http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/
Flickr Shapefiles Public Dataset, Version 1.0, http://www.flickr.com/
(GeoNames)
GeoNames and contributors, http://www.geonames.org.
(GlobCover)
© ESA 2010 and UCLouvain, http://www.esa.int/esaEO/index.html

National Aeronautics and Space Administration, http://www.nasa.gov

Contains Ordnance Survey data © Crown copyright and database right 2012. Contains Royal Mail data © Royal Mail copyright and database right 2012. http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/

(OSDM)
© Commonwealth of Australia, 2012. This data has been used with the permission of the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth has not evaluated the data as altered and incorporated within this software, and therefore gives no warranty regarding its accuracy, completeness, currency or suitability for any particular purpose. http://spatial.gov.au

(OSM)
OpenStreetMap contributors, http://www.openstreetmap.org/
(StatCan)
Statistics Canada, http://www.statcan.gc.ca
(TIGER/Line® fi

Bingo, And that is why I'd like everybody to give Waze a serious try. Similar to OSM it's maps are editable. It requires an active data connection on your device to work fully and properly. As your driving it's continually reporting your location and speed data to their system. This allows it to dynamically route around traffic issues. This used to be the biggest selling point, but it's no longer that unique of a feature. What is unique is that every user is allowed to log into the map and make fixes.

How significant is this? Six months ago I discovered Waze, at the time I was using a TomTom device and was frustrated that finally two years after opening a major new commuter route had finally made it onto the TomTom maps. But another route that cut more time off my commute had just opened and I knew Tomtom wouldn't have it for years to come. When I fired up Waze, less than two months after the second commuter route had opened, it was already in their maps. The second benefit was I'd reported other errors via the TomTom reporting system without ever seeing the fixes getting made. I was able to go into the Maps in Waze and my fixes went active within a couple weeks.

Since then I've spent quite a bit of time cleaning up the roads in my area. I've mapped in a major road re-design and another new commuter route before they were open to traffic. I turned both on a couple weeks before the roads actually opened and both were live on the system the day each road opened. Contrast that to the first road and TomTom taking nearly two years to add it to their maps.

And best of all, Waze is free, those TomTom updates were $12 every quarter, for very slow updates. Waze is as accurate as the users in the area make it, it has helped me avoid several traffic jams and it's free! (as in beer). You don't have to edit or any thing, you just need an iOS or Android device (there are versions that will work on Winmobile, symbian and Blackberry devices but they are not updating those client apps at this time), with an active data connection and you are on your way.

Actually, I've been pretty impressed with OpenStreetMap and the places I've been. That said, I've also occasionally run into missing and incorrectly labeled things.

One of the cool things with OSM, though, is that you can fix the issues. Go buy an inexpensive bike GPS (I use a Garmin Edge 205), ride around your neighborhood and map the streets. It's a pretty entertaining way to spend a lazy Sunday afternoon. Getting the data into it can be a little tricky if you're not good with the various file formats, but it's pretty well documented. I would imagine that there are smartphone apps for doing this as well (the person above mentioned Waze)

If you're more of a couch potato, you can actually go through satellite images and add mapping information from those. Or you can just go through existing maps and enhance them with some local intelligence--I went through and added bike lanes to the streets that I knew had them and added appropriate connections from bike paths to streets. About the only issue you need to be concerned with (from a legal standpoint) is that you should avoid copying information from other maps (eg, Google) until you actually read the terms of service.

Unlike a lot of open projects, you don't need to be a computer science major to contribute. In this case, you don't even need to be an expert cartographer. So rather than complaining that nobody has updated your area since 2003, go ahead and do it!

If we all traveled to the same location at the exact same time this might be a risk. But as we aren't all attempting to travel at the same time to the exact same location, these dynamic systems can see the increasing traffic flow (and resulting decreases elsewhere) and cease giving everyone the same route. The trick is to actually trust the system and let it work as designed. In fact there is a smartphone app that already does this quite well. http://waze.com/ and the Waze app. Waze is used by millions of drivers across this country (and around the world). It does a very good job of dynamically routing around slowdowns. As I've driven with it I've seen many routings that seemed odd, until the radio announced an accident causing a jam on the route I thought it should have sent me on. I've yet to see it route me into any Waze caused congestion.

Just yesterday I took a drive that normally takes just under an hour drive, (about 68 miles depending on route) during rush hour. In the past, just listening to the radio and trying to pick the best route based on that info I'd be lucky to make that drive in less than 2 hrs at that time of day. With Waze picking my route I only ran into one slowdown, at a major choke point that isn't really avoidable, but I still made the drive in just over an hour due to Waze taking me on a route I wouldn't have considered taking as it did add a few miles, but it substantially cut the time I would have spent sitting in traffic on my preferred route and primary alternative.

It's not perfect, my sister also uses Waze, but had further to go to the gathering we attended. Where she lives she couldn't avoid some substantial construction delays, an alternate route simply does not exist (A lake is in the way of the best route for an alternative). Another sister doesn't use it, she called to say she was stuck in traffic, I pulled up waze and saw that both the routes she could have taken were blocked by accidents substantially slowing traffic. A quick look showed me where the accidents were, and what the average traffic speeds were, and the fact that she was stuck in traffic with no options to get around it. Once she finally got there, we showed her Waze and I'm pretty sure she tried it driving home, even thought the traffic was long gone by then.

These systems are workable, not just in hyped theory but in practice because they already exist, and work as advertised, not as you fear.

Doesn't everyone realize the "tom tom pro 3100" won't be able to communicate without some sort of data plan?

Apps like waze provide GPS routing and real-time traffic information (including location of police speed-traps) for free, all you need is a smartphone.

You do realize that your smartphone won't work without some sort of data plan, right?

I wish I could have posted this further up, but this is about as high to the top as I can get.

Doesn't everyone realize the "tom tom pro 3100" won't be able to communicate without some sort of data plan? TomTom offers plans now that will send you traffic information based upon your location but there is a yearly fee for that information. Anyone want to pay to tell the insurance company you were going 10mph over today so your premiums go up? Didn't think so.

Having to pay hundreds for the device and then pay an additional fee for data is killing the stand-alone GPS market. Apps like waze provide GPS routing and real-time traffic information (including location of police speed-traps) for free, all you need is a smartphone. TomTom's grasping at straws with this press release, their market is drying up and they know it. Why pay $300+ and $60+ a year for something that's already free on your phone?

Waze even provides real time road updates by users. For example I can report an accident and the location is marked for other users to see live. TomTom's can't do that.

I have two TomToms. One's an older TomTom ONE and the other is a 5" TomTom XXL. I don't use either one, I use Waze.

This feature is actually implemented in Waze for Android/IPhone/BB. If you enable it, it remembers your common routes and uploads them to the server. Not only does it consider them in the future for your own navigation but it uses them when offering others routes as well.

That is to say, if you happen to have discovered a good route to avoid traffic when commuting, it may share that route with other users if it agrees that its faster.

I often set my GPS to my destination then simply ignore it as I drive there. I look down periodically to see what it believes my ETA to be (and my newest Tomtom device is notoriously accurate in this regard), but I only use it for the actual directions when going somewhere I haven't been before.

On the other hand, I've been playing a lot with Waze on my Android phone lately, and I love its collaborative approach to mapping and notifications. If I leave Waze runningw hile driving, it records my average speeds and uses them for calculating best routes for other drivers, it lets me submit events in realtime like traffic jams, police speed traps, accidents, construction zones, etc. which are reported to other Waze users (Wazers) in real-time allowing them to avoid these if they're using it for nagivation.

Interestingly, it also allows recording or fixing of roads online, which is a great feature for people who live in areas with poorly maintained maps. It even supports fixing of house number locations.

Firefox is still faster in at least one real-world web app that matters to me. A free GPS smartphone app called Waze lets you edit and make corrections to the map by signing in to your account on their website. Their editor at http://www.waze.com/cartouche/ is where you make these edits, and Firefox is amazingly responsive with this web app. Chrome, on the other hand, has been getting more and more aggravating to use with this app. User input responsiveness has been getting worse and worse ever since Google starting making huge gains in their javascript performance. If I click on a road segment in Firefox it pretty much instantly gets selected and highlighted. There is a very large delay in doing the same thing in Chrome. In Firefox, if I click on some point in the map and drag to move my view of the map, the map starts moving right away. If I do the same in Chrome I get the same glacial delay before it starts moving the map, and every time you drag the mouse before letting go of the mouse button there is the same delay before your movement translates to movement of the map. In fact, any and all user interactions with the app involves an awful lot of delay. And why, I don't know. How come it's perfectly fluid in Firefox, and in Chrome it's an exercise in patience? If Chrome is *that* much faster, why is it an insane amount slower to edit Waze maps with it?

You mean something like this?

There are good examples how you can be even more successful and none of them involves around any money.

Skype's own clients on mobile devices are really problematic and third parties (read as:free coders) like Fring, which is a giant on mobile scene have been treated really bad recently.

I personally use Nimbuzz but removed Skype from its profiles as connection was always shaky (for some reason) with Skype servers. So, I decided to install their "official" version, a nice attempt but a giant in terms of Symbian devices. It was also packaged (think like deb,msi,pkg) wrong so, it installs a very critical tiny framework to "storage" which causes severe issues. The real issue is, they are re-inventing wheel needlessly. Such issues with "network switching", "auto reconnect" has been long fixed on Fring, Nimbuzz and whatever IM program which are very mature.

BTW, this is experience from Symbian which is very close to Android in terms of "developer freedom". There is no "don't use that api or we won't post it to app store" like stuff going on. So, it is not like iPhone where you give credit to developers for coding rather lightly/basic because of its SDK/TOS etc.

You know, I hope they don't say "Even Google didn't go their own way and adopted XMPP/Jabber" at one point. Things really started to remind the ICQ 1998. Their serious issue is, they are much like 1990s minded AOL. These days, it is all about open source, I am not talking about Linux on Desktop :) For example, check http://world.waze.com/ , its client which does way more than Skype is open source and GPL V2 even.

They aren't? Then what are all those GPS/location equipped mobiles in those cars doing?

Have a look at Waze - http://world.waze.com/

Sounds like you want Waze. Community generated maps, editable online with your web browser (so you can correct wayward GPS tracks). Points system for ranking your contributions and generating interest. Manual reporting of speed traps, hazards etc, and automatic alerting when you're on a road and just travelling too slowly.

Apps that do just that are starting to appear...Check out Waze if you haven't seen it yet. They've built entire country maps from scratch with their client (they started with a base map first in the U.S.)

The 3GS has 256Mb, but the 2G and 3G do only have 128Mb.

This will be nice even if only for google's turn by turn app. I love my iPhone, but I don;t love TomTom's ludicrous price for their app.

Well, you could always look into other options, such as Waze. It's not that great with home addresses but it works fine with most businesses I've tried. Plus it gives turn-by-turn voice directions, learns improved routes as you use it, and it's Open Source.

As with much OSS, it's not perfect, but it seems to be steadily improving since I've started using it.

The thing is, I totally get what he is saying - I use a free nav app for the iPhone (and most other platforms) called Waze. At times, the screen is lit up like a christmas tree with a thousand data points.

But how I like to use the app, is simply as an informational display as to what is around me. So the app would be even more useful to me, if there was a mode that showed the next three streets upcoming and not much else. Kind of like he was talking about the tube map, a more logical and clearly presented map that lets me parse important information much more quickly so I don't have to pay attention, I just have to glance.

With each new version, Waze is shaping up to be *the* turn by turn GPS for the G1 (and other android phones) and with that any android phone should be your all in one device.

Waze (which is free btw) got turn by turn in 1.2 (currently at 1.3.1) and can do voice directions while playing an mp3 (as long as you have it on 2D view - still stutters occasionally* when you have 3D view on the G1. Also do a sanity check on the directions, occasionally I've gotten some wonky (6 mile directions to a location 1/2 mile away).

There's even a specific wikipedia app. I have these all on my G1 and have been happy (plus the Amazon Barcode app, pretty sweet to pull up the Amazon reviews and prices when shopping locally).

*This was as of version 1.3.0 I haven't tested 1.3.1 in this regard.

This isn't hackable but it's awesome:

http://www.waze.com/faq/

Works in Israel so far and they say that it will roll out to the USA soon. Doesn't require special hardware and the software is free (as in beer).