""Waze hopes to become a sort of Wikipedia of mapping by creating a community where drivers can edit roads and insert details like street names and construction projects," says John Canali, an analyst at Strategic Analytics. Drivers can report accidents by pressing a button on their mobile-Waze records the location. Users also edit maps online, alerting Waze to deadspots like tunnels and assigning names to previously unmapped streets. Contributors move up in rank and earn map-editing privileges and the right to manage, say, your neighborhood. In Israel, nearly 100,000 people have downloaded the app since January. It speaks to the fact that people will contribute if in return they get free navigation and real-time traffic info. "The genie's out of the bottle. How do you compete with free?" implores Canali. Bardin promises it'll never push ads to their users." - Dan Smith