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.

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.”

New reputation-based antivirus systems are doing a better job of blocking malicious software than did their predecessors.

That’s what testing and certification company NSS Labs discovered when it looked at how good antivirus software really is at blocking Web-based attacks.

NSS tested nine antivirus products by installing the software and then directing the PC to a battery of more than 3,000 Web sites that were known to be actively downloading malicious software to PCs. For two products — built by Trend Micro and McAfee — the tests took a look at how much so-called reputation-based malware detection systems really helped block malware. These reputation systems use a variety of techniques to size up a program and get a sense of whether it’s trustworthy.

According to NSS President Rick Moy, antivirus products that ship with reputation systems tended to do better in the tests. “Not all AV is the same,” he said. “There are huge differences between anti-malware products, and the reputation systems are making a considerable impact.”

With Trend Micro Internet Security and McAfee Total Protection, NSS compared how the software did with reputation-based detection turned both on and off. Trend Micro’s software improved by 23 percent with the system active; McAfee’s improved by 8 percent.

The top 4 consumer AV products, as rated by NSS based on the percentage of malware caught, were as follows:

1) Trend Micro Internet Security 2009 / 96.4%

2) Kaspersky Internet Security 2009 / 87.8%

3) Norton Internet Security 2009 / 81.8%

4) McAfee Total Protection Suite 2009 / 81.6%