If you haven’t had your fill yet of location-based services that will help you navigate your way through unfamiliar places, then if you haven’t been using Waze yet, the newest update might just convince you to get the app. Version 3.9 introduces a whole slew of new features, with the greatest of them being the addition of Places, which will create a crowd-sourced wealth of information regarding both businesses and residential areas.
Just like Foursquare (now Swarm) and to some extent, Google Maps, Waze’s Places allows users to add information like landmarks, pictures to help identify unfamiliar locations, and even best parking areas in or around the place. Users can also edit and update details about certain places, which is all and good for the really helpful users but some trolls may just cause confusion and blacken the name of a place, a risk you take when using crowd-sourced apps and programs like this. Waze has also redesigned the preview screen so that it will be easier for you to see the info added by other users on the place where you’re going to.
What makes Waze different from other location-based services is that it focuses more on driver-friendly options and information, like the aforementioned feature regarding parking availability. Another very useful feature, particularly for those who are very forgetful about where they parked, is the ability to add automatic parking pins so you won’t spend countless minutes trying to figure out where your vehicle is. If you’re competitive over how helpful you can be to other drivers, adding information to any of the places will earn you points, and you’ll be able to see your leaderboard ranking.
Since it has been acquired by Google, you can expect to see that some of Waze’s features will eventually be incorporated into Google Maps and Navigation, so Places will most likely make its way there. For now, you can update your Waze app or download it from the Google Play Store.
SOURCE: Waze
