Boston is racing this morning! And no, we’re not talking about traffic violations. New England is sending in its best and brightest to run the Boston Marathon — covering a 40K historic route headed to Beantown.

That’s great news for runners — but with the series of road closures around the greater Boston area to accomodate them, it’s potentially pretty bad news for drivers. Fear not, New England! Wherever a carmageddon looms in the shadows, Waze’s hardy community of drivers comes through to save the day. Boston’s Wazers got onboard and pitched in to update Waze’s live map, reflecting road closures and other obstacles unsuspecting drivers may hit today.

Thanks to them, Waze will route drivers in the Boston area this morning safely around the marathon, so they can get where they need to go in a jiffy.

If the marathon interferes with your morning commute through Boston, Waze will send you through the best alternative route until roads are re-opened. Look out for changing traffic conditions, too, as drivers change up their normal driving routine.

Up-to-the-minute maps and routing info, compiled collaboratively from local driving communities — that’s what Waze is all about!

Waze wishes good luck to all of today’s runners (and drivers!). May you all reach your finish lines with ease.

Recently, we were curious about finding out how the majority of people came to hear about Waze, and after doing an informal poll via social media – as we assumed – we saw that word-of-mouth plays a big role. It’s people like you, sharing info about an app they love with their friends, that have the power to create new driving communities all around the world. In fact, there are certain countries where we’ve never done an official launch or gotten any press whose communities have been created by word-of-mouth alone!

The benefits of spreading the word are clear – the more people using Waze in your area, the better it gets. Routes improve, ETAs become even sharper, and traffic information amps up big-time. So how about it? An easy way to spread the word is to post our guided tour on your Facebook page with a few words about how you benefit from using Waze. And as a thank you for helping to get others on board, now through the end of April, we’d like to offer you your choice of a Waze secret society sticker or magnet (see below) in return for posting the guided tour on your page. To get your magnet, please fill out this form, and allow about 6-8 weeks for delivery. Many thanks for your support Wazers!

Recently, we convened a couple of super-user meet-ups in Parish5 and Palo Alto, CA, bringing together top Wazers from around the world with the intention of connecting them to one another face-to-face (many already knew eachother from the Forums), and seizing the opportunity to glean their invaluable feedback about our product…

With users like ours, it goes without saying that both meetings were a great success, but what surprised us even more was the initiative taken by local Waze communities to create meet-ups of their own!

Just a few weeks ago, 14 Slovak Wazers and 1 from the Czech Republic gathered to discuss all things Waze and came up with a list of feature requests and bugs that they sent over to our attention. Meet up organizer, Wazer guri211, also shared some positive feedback about recent updates such as the 3.0 design and new map editor, which was really nice to hear. And only a few days ago, the Hungarian Wazer community had a small meet-up, set up by Wazer Wroadd, with the intention of organizing a larger meet-up with Waze staff in Budapest sometime in May.

Without getting too corny, you guys never cease to amaze us. We love the way a few super committed Wazers have organized to bring users together in their communities, and we want the trend to continue! If any of you out there want to bring a Wazer meet-up to your area and can bring together a dozen or more local Wazers, we’d love to send one or two of our staff people out to share some behind-the-scenes info and hear what you guys have to say. If it sounds like something you’d like to do, don’t be shy, make it happen! We really enjoy the chance to get out and meet you guys…

Hey Wazers-

Big day, big news, and big updates for Waze on iOS! Today we’re happy to launch Waze 3.1 with new sharing features for all you procrastinators and leave-laters. Now you can let anyone know via text or email that you’re running late, along with your current location, ETA, and destination!! We’ve also brought back the newly redesigned navigation list– Yep- just goes to show, good things come to those who waze..I mean wait.

We’re also testing our new-hands free system in the US and Canada, so be sure to check out the new magic wave for all your traffic reporting needs, by voice!

There are also a ton of stability issue fixes, bug fixes, and general things you’d expect in any new version.

Check it out in the Appstore, and remember to rate it again, as we have to start all over every time we do a new launch.

Thanks guys-

Happy Wazing!