Waze
My new favorite app for the iPhone is Waze. I would describe it as a crowd sourced satnav app. I guess kind of like web 2.0/user generated blah blah for GPS. Dash but for the iPhone and a little cuter.
Traffic and incidents get sourced from users driving around. Routing is also sourced/optimized by users driving around. Map errors, point of interests, etc all sourced from users. Unfortunately, because it is “crowd sourced”, to get really good it needs to reach some critical mass. It’s been around in Israel for a while longer, so it supposedly works very well there and has many fans. So for now, it is an “meh/OK” turn by turn GPS app. But it is free which kind of makes up for it. What is cool though is that to promote people to drive around with the app running, Waze acts as a real life Pac-man. As you drive around on unverified roads, your little avatar thingy eats dots and earns points. I guess I’m easily entertained.
UI-wise, I think it needs a little help in the address searching and POI lookups. Voice prompts for turn by turn instructions is supposedly in the pipeline.
And the name. I love the name. Ways + Maze = Waze. Easy to pronounce, easy to spell. Short. Multiple connotations with path finding.