14 DAY TRIAL // Waze, the crowd sourcing navigation service launched last year, has just announced that mobile phone users in Germany and France can now benefit from the features of their free turn-by-turn GPS app. According to the company, handset owners in these countries will enjoy access to a comprehensive set of German and French road grids, which will be merged with the data already received from local users.
For the time being, is seems that local users will have to validate road directions through driving on the roads themselves, while also adding road names via waze’s online map editor, and the solution will end up being a fully functioning map of each country. At the same time, waze users will also have to possibility to win various prizes, and the only thing that they need to do is to drive on roads where virtual treasure chests are located.
According to waze, French and German users will find most roads being marked with plenty of ‘road munching’ dots, which are nothing else than GPS points that set the road's direction when driven over. This way, the map's quality and navigability are to be increased, and users will receive extra points. “The process of validation is incredibly quick – within just a couple of weeks, these maps will be fully navigable and highly accurate,” the company notes.
Some of the features that German and French wazers will benefit from include: - a brand new road grid - UI and voice prompts in their own languages - a road full of ‘goodies’ to help new users rack up points as they help improve the navigability of the map in their areas.
Among these goodies, waze says that users will find small icons worth 3 and 5 bonus points, which are places in areas where the map needs validation. And there are also the treasure chests, which can deliver Amazon gift cards to user, the company adds on a blog post.