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FixPhrase – open-source, patent-free what3words alternative

fixphrase.com

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Re: FixPhrase – open-source, patent-free what3words alternative

#21

Post by kybernetikos »

pornel wrote: post #19
kybernetikos wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of using words is that it should be more reliable when roundtripping via voice or memory. I think it's much easier for people to remember 'reader giraffe suppose advance' than WF24+VMR

w3w fails at this, because it uses words that sound similar (recede reseed, innocence innocents, and many others: https://cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-su... ). Good luck playing spelling bee of "clairvoyants" in emergency. Some words may also be difficult to pronounce/hear/spell by non-native speakers. Unlike regular sentences, there's no context to disambiguate.

Yeah, I agree. I think that what3words hasn't spent enough effort on this, or perhaps is suffering from trying to cram everywhere into 3 words, which means the wordlist needs to be unmanageably large.

Even for my attempt at the problem, I did various experiments on the word list, but an ideal attempt would check for similarity across common accents, etc and I certainly wasn't able to do that.

Having said that, I think it's a valid and realistic goal for good word encoder systems to aim for good roundtripability via voice or memory.

Re: FixPhrase – open-source, patent-free what3words alternative

#23

Post by kybernetikos »

yardstick wrote: post #20
kybernetikos wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would it increase the risk of being slightly wrong? If anything, it helps to have consistent prefixes because you make it more likely that someone will be able to recognise areas, or know when places are near to other places. If the system allows it, you can also use fewer words to target a bigger area. For example https://wherewords.id/juniper/detailed/ is an area of Paris, while https://wherewords.id/juniper/de…

The risk comes from mishearing someone. Especially relevant in Europe with all the different accents. With w3w, Gare Du Nord is sunshine.frame.acted while sunshine.frames.acted is Abu Dhabi and sunshine.frame.actor is in Malaysia. https://what3words.com/sunshine.frame.acted https://what3words.com/sunshine.frames.acted https://what3words.com/sunshine.frames.actor While in wherewords.id, changing rate to fate or late o…

I still prefer the benefits that come with the hierarchical approach. You can learn where things are, if you're wrong and didn't know it in advance, you're still close to where you need to be, you can get a sense of how far away things are from each other even without looking them up or being online, and you can use context to reduce the amount of information you need to remember / communicate (e.g. say you're communicating 4 locations close to each other, most likely you can do that with 3+4 words with a hierarchical system).

The benefits of a random allocation vanish if you are building an application where Abu Dhabi, Malaysia and Paris are all reasonable answers. The w3w case is particularly bad because their wordlist is enormous and has so many ways you can confuse things.

I still think that a hierarchical system with an optional checkword/digit/emoji is the best solution to situations where you want to be 100% sure you got it right first time, but I accept that maybe the emoji is a bit too cute, and a normal word or number might be better.

I think the endgame for these types of systems doesn't need to assume online usage. It'd be fantastically useful in vehicle GPS systems for example, especially in countries with poor addressing.

Re: FixPhrase – open-source, patent-free what3words alternative

#24

Post by [deleted] »

pkulak wrote: post #10
toolz wrote: post #7

neither this nor w3w are as useful as googles already open source https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ in my opinion. With plus codes you can both have a short, memorable address and gauge relative distance with other nearby addresses. I'm not sure I can think of a reason to ever use fixphrase or w3w as an alternative to this already existing open standard.

w3w considers the disambiguity an asset. Almost like a check sum. If you enter an address, and it's in the middle of the Pacific, you know you wrote it down wrong.

[deleted]

Re: FixPhrase – open-source, patent-free what3words alternative

#26

Post by heffer »

toolz wrote: post #7

neither this nor w3w are as useful as googles already open source https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ in my opinion. With plus codes you can both have a short, memorable address and gauge relative distance with other nearby addresses. I'm not sure I can think of a reason to ever use fixphrase or w3w as an alternative to this already existing open standard.

I had to do a double take on the "Powered by Plus Codes" section of that website as one of the pictures they used there shows a girl holding some kind of document in front of a plus code labelled house. Her shirt reads "It's a all a big lie". I thought that was hilarious.

Re: FixPhrase – open-source, patent-free what3words alternative

#27

Post by CompuHacker » 

  0, 0         catatonic magnetism sandworm   swimsuit  "Null Island"
  90, 0        abacus    magnetism sandworm   swimsuit  "South Pole"
  -90, 0                                                "North Pole"
  85.0511, 0   detonator magnetism snowboard  theft     "South Limit"
  -85.0511, 0  activity  magnetism smudge     vicinity  "North Limit"
  0, -90       catatonic gloater   sandworm   swimsuit  "Easter Island"
  0, 90        catatonic pogo      sandworm   swimsuit  "Indian Ocean"
  0, 180       catatonic sandblast sandworm   swimsuit  "East Limit"
  0, -180      catatonic driver    sandworm   swimsuit  "West Limit"
Latitude is limited to ±85.0511 in OSM and Google Maps. Could someone request the words for "90, 0" and "-90, 0" manually? Second line above is glitchy but seems to be off-map South, at the pole, as expected.

Re: FixPhrase – open-source, patent-free what3words alternative

#28

Post by CompuHacker »

ReflectedImage wrote: post #25

The work behind what3words isn't the algorithm. It's the word list used. They have linguistics who check the sounds of words, are they too similar to another word are they rude, etc, etc..

It'd be interesting to apply a Hilbert curve [0] to the Earth with the PGP Word List, with the even/odd list being used for each hemisphere, or used normally as a check. [1]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilbert_curve

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGP_word_list

Re: FixPhrase – open-source, patent-free what3words alternative

#29

Post by tyingq »

heffer wrote: post #26
toolz wrote: post #7

neither this nor w3w are as useful as googles already open source https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/ in my opinion. With plus codes you can both have a short, memorable address and gauge relative distance with other nearby addresses. I'm not sure I can think of a reason to ever use fixphrase or w3w as an alternative to this already existing open standard.

I had to do a double take on the "Powered by Plus Codes" section of that website as one of the pictures they used there shows a girl holding some kind of document in front of a plus code labelled house. Her shirt reads "It's a all a big lie". I thought that was hilarious.

A large version of that image: https://storage.googleapis.com/gweb-uniblog-publish-prod/ima...

The document appears to be a savings account "passbook" from a post office.

Re: FixPhrase – open-source, patent-free what3words alternative

#30

Post by Brajeshwar »

So, What3Words is marketing and advertising heavily in India and I have to kinda chuckle at the complexities of the words that are not as common as we speak in everyday English. Try saying "interacts.scrapped.evoked" to an Uber driver and he would cancel you instantly.
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