4 Reasons why I LOVE Waze!

If anybody is wondering what the best mapping/GPS app is out there, I can answer that question for you.  Definitively, it is Waze.

Waze is an Israeli company that was recently bought by Google for $1.1 billion last month.

Why is Waze the best one out there? 

1. Unlike most mapping apps, they crowd-source their data on traffic, etc from their users.  This is extremely powerful.  With conventional mapping programs, you'd typically enter your destination and then it'll map out the best route and show you.  Some may even give you 2 or 3 options to choose from.

Waze will calculate based on all the users using it, what is the quickest route.  They will also re-route you around a heavy traffic jam if they believe its quicker.  I've learned to trust Waze when they tell me this other route is faster despite my better judgment saying that it's not.

Case in point - I was at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, NJ over the 4th of July weekend.  That Sunday, we were leaving the park at 6 pm. Waze told me to take this back road route all the way up to Outerbridge Crossing which enters into Staten Island, despite us being only 5 miles from the New Jersey Turnpike which goes a lot faster.  I trusted Waze and took this unknown back road, which was, by the way, 12 miles shorter than if I took the Turnpike.  It wasn't until after I read the newspapers the next morning that I discovered the Turnpike had a 16 mile standstill backup at that precise time that took several hours to clear up.  Thanks WAZE!

This is especially powerful in areas where there are lots of users, like on the east coast of the U.S.  I can't vouch for its accuracy in the fly-over states though. They also do allow you to make map modifications and I've read that they're extremely active overseas, like in Europe, etc.  Will be going to Morocco next week so we'll see if it works over there also.  Do they even have iPhones in Morocco??? 

2. One other feature that I find extremely handy - they have a list of gas stations - and using crowd-sourced information, will give you the gas prices for that gas station.  You can pull into the station and update the price if its incorrect.  This comes in handy when you can scroll down and see 20 cents difference if you go left at that corner and down a couple blocks.  VERY powerful. I find myself checking this often to find where the cheapest is so I can fill up or planning around a fill-up and this can save you a couple dollars if you put some energy in it.

The new Google Maps update supposedly is supposed to incorporate some crowd-sourcing on the traffic aspect, as well as on rerouting you around traffic.  I haven't seen this yet as I'm in love with Waze. Will be testing it out though. They likely incorporated this from Waze since they acquired the company.

3.  There are other features, like chatting with other Wazers, you can see accidents on a map that are reported by Wazers, and you can even report them yourself, like a traffic jam or an accident, or even (my favorite) police hiding on highways.

4. It has various other features that other mapping programs have, like verbal cues when you need to take a turn or an exit. This isn't unusual. The one thing I love most is how it'll estimate your time of arrival, and depending on your speed, its pretty accurate down to the minute.  I took a 5 hour drive down to Virginia a couple weeks ago, and it had the ETA within 5 minutes of when I left.  I thought I'd be there an hour earlier because I typically speed, but we still arrived at the time that was estimated.  Amazing. 

One negative, this app can be extremely draining if you leave it running while driving so make sure its plugged in.  Also when you're no longer using it, make sure its shut off or it'll keep running even if you're not driving.  They have a button within the settings that will "shut down" the app so it'll reduce battery drain.

Sarina's Sephardic Cuisine - almost done!

I just sent in more comments and feedback to the developer.

Initially, they had a very awkward search function.  You could only search within a category. For example, you have to select a category, like dairy or pastries. Then you can filter based on how its tagged, i.e. meat, parve, dairy or beginner, intermediate, or hard.  I didn't like that.  I couldn't for example, find all meat recipes across all categories.  I have to go into each individual one to search for that.

Also, we make a lot of references to other recipes within the app, and they're not always using english names, so it can be hard to find them.  We want you to be able to type the name and then it'll find it for you or give you a list.   We were not happy with the search function, so we paid a significant amount to have them work on this.

This has dragged on for almost 9 months now.  We're getting very frustrated because the turn around is long.  This time, we put down a deadline, we want it back by July 15th so we can submit it to the app store. We intend to have it launched and ready to go live on August 15th.  Rosh Hashanah comes very early, so we want to launch it around the holiday and promote it like crazy between now and then.

We're told that its about 2-4 week turnaround time for the App Store to approve first time apps, which is why we want it there within the next couple weeks.  Lets hope this time around its perfect!  I feel like the design could be better, but the money isn't there to do that. I hope this makes us enough money so that we can pay for a significant upgrade in the capabilities of the app.

I'm just nervous, I feel like this is a project we've worked on for 18 months, and I hope it goes well. Don't want people to criticize it and give us bad ratings on the app store.

In the meantime, I've been posting several times a day on twitter and on facebook.  Our numbers are slowly creeping up on facebook.  We just passed 500 likes recently.  But twitter has been stubbornly in the low 30s for weeks now.  I know its cuz we didn't post much initially.  I hope that once we go live, that will grow.  I just have to keep plugging along there.