Geek Gestalt

For years, Will Wright has been just about the biggest name in video game development. It's hardly necessary to recite his resume, but just in case you haven't been paying attention, he's the creator of SimCity and its many direct spinoffs, The Sims franchise--which long ago surpassed 100 million units sold--and most, recently, Spore.

But last spring, not long after Spore's much-anticipated release, Wright announced he was leaving Electronic Arts, the game's publisher, for the greener pastures of a start-up called Stupid Fun Club. Though the new venture is backed by EA, it is independent. And Wright, for the first time since he sold Maxis (the developer of Spore, The Sims, and SimCity) to EA, is out on his own.

Will Wright recently left EA for his start-up, Stupid Fun Club. He is now talking for the first time about what the new company will be working on.

(Credit: Electronic Arts)

For months, Stupid Fun Club's mission as a company has been all but a mystery. And only now are details emerging about what the small company, most of whose employees have worked with Wright for years, is up to.

However, as Wright told CNET News' sister site GameSpot in April, "This started many years ago actually, with friends I met doing Robot Wars together. That's when we originally coined the name, because it's kind of ridiculous to invest hundreds of hours building these things and then destroy them. But it's great fun, and it's really stupid."

On its Web site, the 12-person company is still cryptic, saying only that, "The Stupid Fun Club is an entertainment development studio. The ideas developed here can be manifested in video games, online environments, storytelling media, and fine home care products."

But it is becoming clear that Wright is looking to branch out beyond games. For example, in a press release that went out Wednesday morning, it was announced that Wright will be in New York keynoting next February at the online games-oriented conference, the Engage Expo, which will run concurrently with the world famous Toy Fair. Indeed, Wright's presentation will be titled, "The Evolution of Entertainment, A Toy's Place," and is expected to examine "toys, play, and the product development process from a new perspective."

On Tuesday, over at VentureBeat, Dean Takahashi caught up with Wright for a Q&A, and got the master designer to spill some of the beans about the company's projects, at least two of which Wright said will be games.

VentureBeat: How do you like getting out on your own?

Will Wright: It's fun. I'm able to work on projects that are much broader than I could at Electronic Arts.

VB: What have you said about them so far. Are they toy related?

WW: One of them is toy related. The others aren't. We are looking at a lot of different industries. There's the web. Toys. We're not restricted to one type of entertainment. We're kind of looking for ideas that cross a lot of different boundaries.

VB: Are you thinking of products like Webkinz, where there's a plush toy and then a code to go to a Web site?

WW: Every product that we are working on has a web component. The web is like the connective tissue in entertainment today....

...VB: What are some examples of things you like now that point in this direction of a new kind of entertainment? I've mentioned Webkinz. What appeals to you?

WW: It's interesting to look at media. I have my Tivo at home. I have my Amazon account. I download video on demand. At the same time, there are all of these huge interesting web communities forming around traditional properties. I am interested in the online communities around popular TV shows. The stuff the participants are doing are very extraordinary. The community around The Lost show on TV is one of my favorites. It's awe inspiring.

If you've ever been driving down the highway and looked at the Google Maps application on an iPhone to see what traffic is like ahead, you may have wondered where the data behind the green, yellow, and red lines indicating real-time vehicle flow come from.

In fact, the data are coming from people just like you: users of smartphones with GPS who, by the very act of driving down the highway, are feeding back information about how fast they're going to Google, which in turn is sending it back to users of its mobile map apps.

Users of the Google Maps iPhone app can get real-time traffic flow data that is based on the passive participation of other users. This is an example of mobile crowdsourcing, something that is a growing trend, especially on iPhones.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Which means, of course, that the application itself is crowdsourced--that is, based on the mutual contributions of many users, all of whom are participating in the product, and without whom, the product would be worthless.

These days, the concept of crowdsourcing--defined by Jeff Howe, who literally wrote the book on the subject, as, "the act of taking a job traditionally performed by a designated agent (usually an employee) and outsourcing it to an undefined, generally large group of people in the form of an open call"--is all the rage, and there are no end of well-known examples, especially on the Web: the Netflix prize; Twitter search; public tagging of Library of Congress archival photos; even Wikipedia. Indeed, much of the concept of user-generated content is really about crowdsourcing.

But until now, much of the discussion about the subject has focused on what people are doing on their computers. Yet today, more than ever before, crowdsourcing has gone mobile. As more smart phones have brought ubiquitous Internet connectivity to the masses, more people have been feeding back into the system. And for now at least, nowhere is that more true than on the the iPhone.

"Why do I love my iPhone, which I do," Howe said in an interview. "Because I'm suddenly doing interesting things with my cognitive surplus. All these times (on public transportation)...are great times to contribute to these group efforts. It's crowdsourcing at its most root definition. Crowdsourcing is a perfect coupling of that downtime, of the very fuel that the crowdsourcing engine needs to run."

Today, the iPhone is not the most popular smartphone but it certainly is gaining steam. According to Gartner, during the second quarter of 2009, the iPhone's share of the global smart phone market had soared to 13.3 percent from 2.8 percent a year earlier. To be sure, the BlackBerry--with 18.7 percent share--and Nokia's offerings--with 45 percent share--still lead in total sales, but it's hard to argue with Apple's growth, or with its dominance in the community-developed application market.

"As Apple has so often done," Howe said, "they did it better sooner...crowdsourcing is only as effective as one's reach allows, because it does require either mass participation or at least mass viewership."

The iPhone app by The Extraordinaries allows users to volunteer small amounts of their time for the collective good.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Which is why there is a growing number of iPhone apps--both those that seek to make money and those that are nonprofit--that are based entirely on crowdsourcing, and which without the buy-in by a critical mass of users would be meaningless.

Some, like the traffic feature in the Google Maps app, are subtle about it. But others shout it out: Their developers know that the public has a thirst for this and have specifically made crowd participation a selling point.

Traffic apps, it turns out, are a natural for mobile crowdsourcing. Because of the iPhone's built-in GPS--on the iPhone 3G and 3GS, at least--and the fact that many owners won't go anywhere without their precious device, it makes perfect sense to build tools that rely on user-submitted data.

Some examples are Waze, which relies on users to inform others about traffic conditions, about road construction and about the existence of angry drivers; Trapster, which lets users report speed traps so that other drivers will be aware of them, in real-time; Aha, which mixes both live traffic flow information with location-based identification of things like cafes, bathrooms, and restaurants; and others.

"I think what it comes down to is what this device right now excels at," said Jacob Colker, the co-founder of a company called The Extraordinaries that is leveraging crowdsourcing. "And that is really to use GPS, a camera, and the phone itself."

Yet there are a growing number of other examples, as well.

One is an app from The Extraordinaries itself. Already well-known for work harnessing the collective power of large numbers of Internet users for the common good, the organization has now put out an iPhone app that lets any user participate in a wide range of causes, right from the device.

For example, users can add tags to photos from the Smithsonian to bring more collective context to that museum's huge archives; help create a huge map of kid-friendly places by finding a "playspace" and snapping a photo of it; or help the city of San Diego cut down on water wastage by reporting any city agency watering during the day or ignoring obvious leaks.

Crowdsourcing can be silly, too. Take the famous Ocarina iPhone app. With that, countless people have used the device to play a kind of flute-like instrument. In and of itself, that's fun but not crowdsourced. But what takes it to the next level is that users can look at a 3D rendering of the globe and see and hear the notes that are being played by other Ocarina users.

That's crowdsourcing in action.

And then there's Yelp, which by definition is crowdsourced. With its iPhone app, the popular tool for letting people rate and comment on businesses, is bringing the power of the collective experience to merchants and retailers anywhere, anytime.

Smule's Ocarina iPhone app lets users play a flute-like instrument and automatically submit their play so that others anywhere in the world can hear it.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

So is the iPhone speeding up the process of taking crowdsourcing mobile?

"I think it's creating conditions for new ideas to flourish," said Colker, "and that's really important. Showing that it is possible, that, yes, I can demand YouTube in my pocket, and I'm going to pull up this app and play flute into it and I'm going to listen to someone playing the Ocarina app in South Africa. It's powerful. It allows people to think in new ways, and to create the kernel for those new ideas to exist, and the conditions for those new innovations to exist."

Every day, Apple is adding more apps to its App Store. And while most do not involve crowdsourcing, an increasing number do. And that seems like a trend that there's little that anyone could do to stop. Nor would anyone want to.

For now, it's hard to say exactly what the next crowdsourced apps will be to come down the pike, but it seems certain there will be an exponentially growing number of them over time. Games will be built that rely on users to locate items in a virtual world; Poetry apps will rely on users submitting their own stanzas; Lolcat sites will depend on iPhone users snapping pictures of cats, slapping funny captions on them, and sending them in; and much more.

In essence, as with the larger app ecosystem, the sky's the limit for crowdsourced apps. And while other smart phones will also have an increasing number of applications that rely on user submissions, the iPhone is likely to stay at the head of the field.

"I think the iPhone itself has done tremendous good for moving technology forward, and as a byproduct, paving the way for new forms of crowdsourcing to exist," Colker said. "And that's what really excites me about the iPhone."

Corrected at 10:16 a.m.: This story originally reported that The Extraordinaries is a non-profit. In fact, it is a for-profit company.

Each year, the Discovery Channel show shoots an episode for the network's Shark Week. The results of one of its shark shows, this articulated beast, hangs on the wall at the show's headquarters, M5 Industries, in San Francisco.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

SAN FRANCISCO--For some of the nearly 100,000 followers of "MythBusters" star Adam Savage's Twitter feed, communicating with him has proven to be more than just your average back-and-forth. For some, it's been a way to submit ideas that he and his Discovery Channel show costars have used for actual episodes.

On October 7, Discovery will begin airing its fall collection of new "MythBusters" episodes, and Savage said that he and costar Jamie Hyneman have taken at least four ideas that have come directly from Twitter users and implemented them on the show.

Among them are exploring the myth that dirty cars are more fuel efficient than clean ones; one that addresses the reality of a YouTube video in which a man shoots high off a huge water slide and lands, far in the distance, in a small inflatable pool; and one about insects.

Photos: 'MythBusters' takes aim at new episodes

To Savage, Twitter has become a terrific way for him to have a dialogue with the show's fans, especially since he says that the highly negative tone of the comments in the show's official forums turns him off and distracts him from doing his job.

By comparison, he said that because his Twitter followers know that he reads all of the tweets sent to him, there's somewhat of a "social contract" involved that improves the conversation. "I still have disagreements with people on Twitter," Savage said. "But it's much more civilized, and for me as a person who wants to give more value to the fans, I think about what I would want to read of someone who I admired, so I post funny things from behind the set" and lots of personal anecdotes.

For Hyneman, by contrast, Twitter, or any other social network, for that matter, isn't useful, and has actually become a bit of a distraction at work.

"I do notice that it's increasingly difficult to get Adam's attention when we're trying to work," Hyneman said, "because (if) you give him an instant of inactivity...it's like, okay," and he starts to use his iPhone.

Adam Savage often takes every available moment during the work day to communicate with people on his iPhone.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Asked why he has an iPhone, Savage said only that he is "an Apple Kool-Aid drinker from way back...and I love everything they produce."

Duct tape and much more
This fall, just as has been the case since "MythBusters" first got started, Savage and Hyneman have been scouring the world for things that pique their curiosity. Indeed, the show has taken the two--plus the show's other team of co-stars, Kari Byron, Grant Imahara and Tory Belleci--on an unending quest for myths to bust that present them with a sense of adventure.

But this fall, viewers will see more on the show about duct tape, probably, than they ever thought possible. In fact, what started as a path towards a single segment on the popular adhesive ended up resulting in an entire duct tape special.

Both teams of "MythBusters" actually did two or three duct tape stories, Savage explained. "Some spectacular stuff came out of that," he said, "and if we could, we'd just move on to more duct tape stuff. But we've got to space it out so we don't over-duct tape the audience."

And while they wouldn't reveal too many details of what they'd done with the famous grey tape, Hyneman did allow that, in one situation, "We were on our way out the Golden Gate Bridge and had to turn back because the camera crew was complaining that they were getting too wet from the rough seas."

Whether that explains the boat covered in duct tape that is now hanging from the ceiling at M5 Industries, the San Francisco studio space where Hyneman and Savage do their work, is hard to say. But the boat is clearly from the duct tape special.

And while the two are cagey about much of what's coming up in the fall's episodes, they did share some information about one or two myths they attempted to bust.

One is the idea that a prisoner could use thousands of antacid tablets to create enough pressure to bust out of his or her cell. The two wouldn't say what the outcome of their experiment with more than 20,000 antacid tablets was, but they did admit that they were able to bust through a scale model of a jail cell made out of glass.

"It comes down to how well is the cell built," joked Hyneman.

The two were also willing to talk about the segment they did for one of the upcoming episodes on the aerodynamics of dirty cars, one of the myths that came from Twitter.

The myth, explained Savage, is that a dirty car is more fuel efficient than a clean one due to the "golf ball effect" caused by the dirt. The idea, he said, is that the dirt creates something of a "boundary layer that allows the car to be more aerodynamic."

Neither Savage nor Hyneman would say what the results of their investigation was, but Hyneman did say that they were both "very, very surprised (by) the results" and that what they found will be "of quite a lot of interest to the automotive industry."

Still another future episode has to do with the physics of bullet ricochets and whether it is possible for a shooter to hit him or herself with a bullet shot in an enclosed space. The results of that experiment also took the two by surprise, particularly because, as Hyneman said, "there are some basic flaws in the concept that you see in the movies with this 'ding-ding-ding and down you go.'"

At a much higher level now
"MythBusters" has now completed production on 134 episodes, and to Hyneman, that much experience has allowed him and Savage to be much more advanced in their approach to busting myths than they were at the beginning.

"The kinds of insights that we're seeing as far as the physics and the chemistry (and) all the dynamics of what's going on there," Hyneman said, "we're starting out at a much higher level now, and so the results that we're getting are not quite as basic as they were when we started."

More to the point, he said, he and Savage attack their work with greater clarity now, and have a better sense of what the best process is for attacking a myth. Oddly, instead of doing better science, or making things stronger or taking more risks, it all begins with the very concepts for each myth.

"The most important thing to get straight is the question you're trying to ask in the first place," Hyneman said. "It seems like a simple thing, but it's hard to get to that point and, a lot of times now, we're spending much more time defining that question before we do anything else."

For years, outgoing Demo managing director Chris Shipley has had an on-stage dance. On Wednesday, in celebration of her handing off the reins of the event to VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall, Shipley led Demo owner IDG founder and CEO Pat McGovern in a version of the jig.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

SAN DIEGO--The Demo community--an august group of entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and technology reporters--gave a fond farewell Wednesday afternoon here to longtime Demo managing director Chris Shipley.

As is well known, Shipley is leaving the helm of Demo, having now officially handed off the reins to VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall.

But as just about the last official act of DemoFall 09, Pat McGovern, the founder and chairman of IDG, which owns the Demo conferences, led the audience in a standing ovation for Shipley.

The DemoFall 09 crowd gave Shipley a standing ovation for her 13 years of work.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Prior to that sentimental moment, meanwhile, seven Demo God winners were announced, as well as the two winners of IDG's media prize.

The seven Demo God winners were:

• Emo Labs, for its Edge Motion speaker technology
• Intelius, for its DateCheck service
• Zorap
• Hevva, for its Local Dirt service
• Twirl TV
• Pinyadda
• ShareGrove

The last two companies were selected from among the 14 "AlphaPitch" presenters, which had just 90 seconds to make their case, rather than the six minutes given to each of the nearly 60 regular Demo companies.

IDG also awarded its two media prizes, one to a consumer product, and the other to an enterprise play. Each winner will receive up to $500,000 worth of free advertising across IDG properties.

Incoming Demo managing director Matt Marshall (left) and Shipley congratulate the founders of Demo God and IDG media prize winner Emo Labs.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

The consumer winner was Emo Labs, whose Edge Motion technology may well change the way the public experiences speakers. The enterprise winner was Liaise, whose software is meant to help companies with "the capture and management of KeyPoints--tasks, issues, dates, and priorities--buried inside e-mails, IMs, and other communications."

As is generally the case, the acceptance speeches were a bit teary-eyed, especially by Demo God and media prize winner Emo Labs' CEO Jason Carlson, who noted that his company had only come to Demo after being convinced by Shipley that he and his team could put together a coherent six-minute presentation.

Earlier, Shipley gave out a series of Lifetime Achievement awards to tech luminaries like Palm co-founder Donna Dubinsky, Diane Greene, a co-founder of VMware, Better Place founder and CEO Shai Agassi, and (in absentia) Marc Benioff.

In his own defiant and emotional moment, Barry James Folsom, CEO of Demo God winner Twirl TV urged the entrepreneurs in the room to carry on, despite any roadblocks they might encounter along their path to success. "If you do not have an obstacle, or someone telling you it's not a good idea, or someone telling you it will never work, and you believe them, you're not an entrepreneur," Folsom said. "(The) Lifetime Achievement award winners...They did it in spite of everyone telling them they couldn't."

Dot Go, from Scientific Media, is positioned as the 'Internet for text messaging,' and promises companies an easy way for potential customers to communicate with them by text message.

(Credit: Scientific Media)

SAN DIEGO--For better or worse, text messaging has become, according to a company called Scientific Media, the most popular mobile application on Earth. And while many companies are trying to build marketing efforts around people's use of texting, it's clear there is a long way to go before those efforts are coherent.

At the DemoFall 09 conference here Wednesday, Scientific Media unveiled its Dot Go service, a tool it hopes large numbers of companies will employ to try to boost their text messaging-based marketing.

The idea? Blow apart the current texting/marketing dynamic, in which companies try to get users to text questions to them, but in which there's no easy way for people to remember the so-called short codes (the five- or six-number codes people text their questions to) used by most companies.

For example, Google offers a wide range of information via text message, and to access it, mobile users must text a message to 466453, which equates to "Google." That one is kind of easy. But Starbucks, by comparison, uses MYSBUX (or 697289), a much harder to remember code. Similarly, Fandango uses FNDGO, or 36346.

Scientific Media's solution to this problem is to do away with each company having its own hard to remember code, and instead have all text messages to companies go through its service, which is reachable by a single short code, "Dotcom."

Dot Go imposes a single rule, Scientific Media said: The first word of any text message sent to Dotcom (368266) specifies the Internet domain a user is looking for.

So, for example, if someone wanted to get information from Fandango, they would simply text "Fandango" to Dotcom. For Weather.com, they'd text "Weather" to Dotcom. By texting "Gasbuddy 92101" to Dotcom, a user would get a list of the five cheapest gas stations in the 92101 zip code.

One major value proposition of this, the company argued, is that text messaging works on every mobile phone, meaning that anyone with such a device can use the service. Also, while good domains are pretty well locked up in the West, there are plenty of great available domain names in developing countries, meaning, the company argued, that the marketing upside is tremendous in such parts of the world.

What this mean, Scientific Media said, is that Dot Go is "the Internet for text messaging." And while that's a very bold claim, you can see what they mean.

As far as monetizing this service goes, it's clear that Scientific Media is hoping to engage companies like Fandango, Starbucks, and Weather.com in co-marketing deals. Will it work? I don't know. I'm often skeptical of these types of services, because they represent nothing but potential. But if that potential pays off, this could be a big winner.

SAN DIEGO--The list of Twitter clients grows every day, and for many people, finding just the right one is a crucial decision. Being able to track and manage multiple accounts is essential, but doing so can create somewhat of a chaotic flow of information.

At DemoFall 09 here Tuesday, DotSyntax unveiled the latest version of its already-popular Digsby social-media management tool, and the new version is geared specifically towards helping solve the Twitter chaos problem.

The new Digsby extrapolates from what it already does with social media offerings from MSN, Facebook, Yahoo, and others. Among those tools are a one-click status setting, easy switching between IM conversations, and seamless tracking of multiple e-mail accounts.

Now, Twitter implementation has become a key component of Digsby. It's the "first Twitter client designed for the mainstream audience," DotSyntax boasts.

The first innovation, the company argues, is a flipping around of the Twitter client standard, in which the stream of tweets is displayed newest first. Instead, Digsby shows the oldest first, so that it is easier to read threads from the beginning.

The client then tracks which tweets you've read so that you don't have to read an entire thread in one sitting. Instead, the tool can bring you back automatically to where you were if you don't finish reading a thread.

Another new approach is defining who are the most important Twitter users someone follows, and separating out everyone else they follow into one column. That means only the most important Twitter users will be in a primary column, making it more simple to see the most important information in your feeds.

There are other new features, as well, but one that I think is the most elegant and useful is adding a reply button to new tweet notifications. As a long-time Twhirl user, I both love and hate the constant pop-ups that let me know I've got new tweets in my feed. But if I see something I want to respond to in one of those pop-ups, I have to switch out of whatever I'm doing, bring up Twhirl and take action. By comparison, Digsby will allow replying to those tweets right from the pop-up.

I'd like to get my hands on the new application and see how it really performs. But it seems like one of the most promising Twitter clients I've seen in awhile, and if a critical mass of others agree, it could become the next standard-bearer client.

SAN DIEGO--It's great to see modern technology applied to experiences we've all had for years. One thing that many people share is the difficulty of getting the most out of traveling, and helping others benefit from what we've learned on our own travels.

After seeing the presentation Tuesday morning at DemoFall 09 from TravelTrac, I'm hopeful that this dynamic may be changing.

TravelTrac enables users to share their travel experiences in real time, with easy uploading of photos, videos, and more.

(Credit: TravelTrac)

The main idea behind TravelTrac is to "share adventures as they happen." This works by enabling people to use their iPhones to share their experiences as they have them. Users can post videos, photographs, their location, and journal entries, whether they're online. If someone is online while doing the posts, the content goes live right away. When not online, those posts go live the next time a user connects.

TravelTrac is built around the concept of creating traveling communities, and the company has broken down its users' experiences into three main areas: MotoTrac, for those who travel by motorcycle; TrekTrac, for those who travel on land by car, train, RV, or other vehicle; and SailTrac, for those who prefer maritime travel.

Regardless of which method someone travels by, what's nice about this is that it allows users to share the best parts--or the worst, if that's what's important in the moment--of their journeys, and for everyone else to benefit from that knowledge. And because the service allows the sharing of a wide range of media, it means that there will be a new form of collective memory of traveling, no matter where people go.

And that is exactly what modern social media and devices like the iPhone are supposed to be about. It's nice to see someone applying these things to something so many people do.

SAN DIEGO--At DemoFall 09 here Tuesday morning, one theme quickly emerged: new applications for collaborative video meetings.

First, Hewlett-Packard introduced its Skyroom videoconferencing application for PCs. But in my opinion, the better answer is Fuze Box's Fuze Meeting. This is a nice application for the iPhone or BlackBerry that allows multiple users to conduct multimedia meetings via their mobile devices.

It's designed to make it possible to add participants easily and quickly from various social-networking services' friends lists--like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter--to a real-time meeting session.

Fuze Meeting allows rich-media videoconferencing on iPhones and BlackBerrys.

(Credit: Fuze Box)

Like Skyroom, Fuze Meeting allows users to have high-definition meetings--on the iPhone, that requires having OS 3.0.

Once a meeting is initiated, users can share a wide range of media with each other, including PowerPoint presentations, business documents, 3D geospatial maps, photos, video, and more. In addition, any URLs used in a meeting can be posted, with one click, onto Facebook or Twitter for wide dissemination.

What's nice about Fuze Meeting is that it seems to provide a simple way to get multiple people together, regardless of where they are, and have a quick meeting where they can all share many different kinds of content. To be sure, this is not likely to be a company's only way to have online meetings for remote employees, but given its ease of use and the fact that it allows the sharing of rich media across popular mobile devices, it seems like something that a lot of people may use.

It's also got a major advantage over HP's Skyroom, which is limited to being used behind a single corporate firewall. I liked Skyroom's technology--though it seemed to have many similarities to Apple's long-available iChat AV software--in particular because it offered the ability to share rich media, including real-time video.

But Skyroom's behind-the-firewall limitations seem unnecessary, and Fuze Meeting proves it.

This post was updated with correct information about requirements for Fuze Meeting on the iPhone.

Using smart phones as navigation tools is all the rage these days, what with a slew of applications available for the iPhone and Android platforms that utilize those devices' built-in GPS systems in determining users' real-time location.

One such service is from Waze, which in August released its iPhone app after being available on Android for several months. Waze's service is meant to help drivers figure out where they are and how best to get where they're going, all with the help of a large community of other motorists.

Waze gives users many different views of the road, including this one, in which users' avatars turn into a Pac-Man-type creature when going down previously undiscovered roads.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Among the information that Waze provides are traffic flow, road reports, and warnings about where drivers might run into speed traps.

At DemoFall 09 in San Diego on Tuesday, Waze plans to unveil its latest steps forward, which include rolling out its service on every major smart phone platform (except BlackBerry) and offering, for the first time, voice prompts for directions.

That could be good news for users of, say, Symbian-based smart phones, in cities where AT&T service is spotty. And that's important because even in a city like San Francisco, using Waze on an iPhone--with AT&T as the only service provider--meant being subject to areas where there was a significant delay in information showing up on the screen.

Further, because the service will now be available on other platforms, it means that the overall amount of data available to drivers--via the crowdsourced nature of the system--will be broader. And, because users until now have had to occasionally look at their small screens to see where they need to go, the voice prompts may well mean an easier--and safer--way to get to a destination.

Waze's application begins as a standard turn-by-turn directions tool and also offers a slew of other features, many of which give drivers something fun to look out for as they make their way to wherever they're going.

"At the end of the day," said Di-Ann Eisnor, Waze's community geographer, Waze is "about a community of drivers helping to build this map."

The company is counting on one part being fun for drivers: seeing where anyone else who's using the system is.

That may be fun for a while, but the application is really about making for a better driving experience, and that will rely on a critical mass of users. Rolling out on Android and iPhone first was a good way to ensure a significant number of drivers, especially tech-savvy ones, had access to it right from the get-go. But only time will tell if the new platforms the service will be on will make a difference in producing that critical mass.

For CNET News' latest coverage from DemoFall 09, click here.