Why You Should Be Using Waze

​Google didn’t just buy it for $966 million dollars. 

What is it?Waze is a GPS navigational app with turn by turn navigation, with a twist – all of the information in the app is user based.

Wtf does that mean?It means that the GPS maps, the roads, everything ON the maps has been submitted via the client Waze app, or the Waze Map Editor (to be explained further). Basically, I can open Waze and see current traffic in my area.

That’s all?Sorry, I was finishing my beer. When I open Waze and set out to drive to a destination, Waze will not only guide me there, it will alert me if I’m coming up on a police car stationed speed trap(not that I couldn’t smell the bacon oink oink), a hazard (car stopped on the road, roadkill, etc.), and even will tell me where the lowest gas prices are. 

Why is this cool? Quite simply, you get rewarded with points for everything you do in Waze, and everyone fucking loves points. There are certain ranks and points for doing certain activities. You can even edit the roads you drive on. It’s like they’re giving us a way to be better than other people in the classroom, the bar, and now the streets.

Of course, your location services have to be on the whole time. I can hear a lot of mouth breathers sitting back, squinting their eyes saying, “WHY WOULD I LET SOME COMPANY KNOW WHERE I AM AT ALL TIMES?” You have a credit card, don’t you? I bet you use it a lot. Your bank knows that. They record where you use it, and what time of day. After a good amount of time of recording your data that you *willingly* gave up, they can run an algorithm that can make an educated guess about where you are at a certain time during the week.

Location services have to be on. That’s the point. I would hate for you to actually *gasp* contribute to your fellow man and help them navigate from one place to another. The feeling of my GPS navigating me through 43 backroads and making me take 4 U-turns to get to my location makes me want to put a box of kittens through a woodchipper.