I’ve never thought about this, but what3words could be hugely helpful for me. My house is essentially located between two streets, and the street name in the address isn’t the actual street where my mailbox is or where you’d enter the gate, so loosing packages is common and it’s hard to explain to friends how to find me
Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries
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Re: Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries
#12Is it correct to assume the implementation isn't open and only what3words can resolve 3words to location and vice versa? What happens if they close down, would my mailing address no longer be resolvable? What happens then? If you'd like to visit my office its at atomic.pipes.rods.
It looks like they've got that covered: "If we, what3words ltd, are ever unable to maintain the what3words technology or make arrangements for it to be maintained by a third-party (with that third-party being willing to make this same commitment), then we will release our source code into the public domain. We will do this in such a way and with suitable licences and documentation to ensure that any and all users of…
Re: Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries
#13Is it correct to assume the implementation isn't open and only what3words can resolve 3words to location and vice versa? What happens if they close down, would my mailing address no longer be resolvable? What happens then? If you'd like to visit my office its at atomic.pipes.rods.
Re: Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries
#14I'm really glad that these folks are succeeding, they've been at it a really long time. They contacted us when I was on a non-profit board that ran an event a few years ago, and it was obvious that it was a great idea that we had no way of implementing. Now that everyone has a phone with them all the time, they're past that barrier. I hope that they get great success.
Re: Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries
#15Is it correct to assume the implementation isn't open and only what3words can resolve 3words to location and vice versa? What happens if they close down, would my mailing address no longer be resolvable? What happens then? If you'd like to visit my office its at atomic.pipes.rods.
It looks like they've got that covered: "If we, what3words ltd, are ever unable to maintain the what3words technology or make arrangements for it to be maintained by a third-party (with that third-party being willing to make this same commitment), then we will release our source code into the public domain. We will do this in such a way and with suitable licences and documentation to ensure that any and all users of…
Geohash is patent free btw. I am sure something can be done here as well.
Re: Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
It looks like they've got that covered: "If we, what3words ltd, are ever unable to maintain the what3words technology or make arrangements for it to be maintained by a third-party (with that third-party being willing to make this same commitment), then we will release our source code into the public domain. We will do this in such a way and with suitable licences and documentation to ensure that any and all users of…
Not particularly reassuring, can't someone just create an open system with a similar concept and release the mapping.
Apart from that, it's basically "just" geohashes with a different (population-density based) encoding.
Re: Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
It looks like they've got that covered: "If we, what3words ltd, are ever unable to maintain the what3words technology or make arrangements for it to be maintained by a third-party (with that third-party being willing to make this same commitment), then we will release our source code into the public domain. We will do this in such a way and with suitable licences and documentation to ensure that any and all users of…
What if they don't keep their word? A lot will come to depend on this. Geohash is patent free btw. I am sure something can be done here as well.
Re: Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries
#18Re: Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
What if they don't keep their word? A lot will come to depend on this. Geohash is patent free btw. I am sure something can be done here as well.
The what3words algorithm has a patent pending though[0]. Let's see if it will stand up to geohashes as prior art. [0]: https://www.google.com/patents/US20160073225
Re: Nigeria has become the seventh country to adopt what3words for mail deliveries
#20"doors.aware.secure" gives you no indication of where it could be, especially when the neighbor is "hotel.leans.poetic"
If it's not meant for humans, then why not use GPS coordinates which are even more precise?
Not to mention, I'm sure there will be insensitive randomly generated strings like "muddy.ashes.pardon" https://map.what3words.com/muddy.ashes.pardon