Just what are we talking about? A Halloween addition to the social sat nav application called Waze.

If you drive in and around Southend-on-Sea and own a smartphone, give Waze a try. You’ll be helping to complete a map of Southend, as well as share real-time road travel information, chat with others on the road, and work your way up the leader table.

The ghosts? Ahh yes. One of the killer features of Waze is the ‘road goodies’ – drive over them to get bonus points. The cupcakes have been replaced by ghools and pumpkins.

Waze Westcliff, pimped for Halloween

Fire up your smartphone, and install Waze. Some of the Sarfend team have been busy adding local roads, so give it a try. Your fellow Southenders on the road need YOU! (More: Waze in Southend)

Waze is available, FREE, from www.waze.com (iphone link)

Waze is a social GPS application that has a big following in the US, and is now over here. The idea is simple. Drive around with this app running on your phone, and a map of roads and average road speed is built-up. Users can report speed cameras and accidents (with photos) and share that info with others. Problem is, the map of Southend is a bit thin:

It looks like most of the mapping effort has been done by one ‘HonourableKilla’ – Southend thanks you. So – can the readers of these news pages rise to the challenge and help build up Southend’s map? The Waze service rewards you with road munching points, and bonus points for driving around areas marked with little pink fairy cakes.

Go on – give it a try. If you’ve got an iPhone, go to Waze at iTunes, otherwise Waze is in the Android Market store and in Nokia Ovi. Full details at www.waze.com

Come on gang… get driving! (More: Waze in Southend)

Those images are now live, and by typing an address into maps.google.co.uk , you’ll be able to see and navigate around to see what the cameras picked up.

If you’ve not used the service before – the trick is to type in a street address or postcode into maps.google.co.uk, then drag the little icon of a person from the controller on the left, and drop the person onto the appropriate street. You’re then in a scrollable view of that street and can move around, pan up, turn around and zoom.

Found anything interesting happening in Southend? Let us know below

Apparently, the closure of the Deeping is to enable a series of “road improvements”, including a programme to replace the Victoria Circus roundabout with a traffic light junction.

The closure of the Deeping will make getting into the town to park at Warrior Square car park much more difficult and undoubtedly put more pressure onto the other town centre junctions. Many will remember the temporary closure of the Deeping in 2006, which caused delays getting into the centre of town for some months.

We’d be interested to hear your views…

As locals will know, the speed for the stretch of the dual carriageway approaching Southend recently dropped from 70mph down to 50mph, with average speed cameras in place to enforce this limit.

Essential safety solution, or a council money-maker? More discussion on the A127 50mph Speed Limit Protest Group on Facebook.