31–40 of 72 posts
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.
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 Lim…
0, 0 catatonic magnetism sandworm swimsuit
90, 0 dimmed magnetism sandworm swimsuit
-90, 0 abacus magnetism sandworm swimsuit
0, -90 catatonic gloater sandworm swimsuit
0, 90 catatonic pogo sandworm swimsuit
0, 180 catatonic sandblast sandworm swimsuit
0, -180 catatonic driver sandworm swimsuitEarlier 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.
More seriously, English is such a terrible language for this, because it's so full of ambiguities.
I'm trying to think of a use case for such a service. Any ideas?
The biggest issue this type of solution faces is a lack of standardization. There's this, What3Words, other people's hobbyist versions, Google has something like this built into their map product, etc. Every additional implementation is yet another nail in the coffin of the very concept.
The only way it would gain traction is if it were a government-mandated system. But every government already has one, and the benefits of adopting such a system don't outweigh the costs yet.
This is a bit like my http://wherewords.id that I made as a fun holiday project. I used the S2 cells (same as the one used by pokemon go), and my own wordlist. Using this approach, I believe I got accuracy down to squares of approximately 2x2 metres with 4 words (from a wordlist of 4096 words). FixPhrase only claims accuracy of 11m, which isn't terrible, but won't locate a single parking space or front door particula…
This is a bit like my http://wherewords.id that I made as a fun holiday project. I used the S2 cells (same as the one used by pokemon go), and my own wordlist. Using this approach, I believe I got accuracy down to squares of approximately 2x2 metres with 4 words (from a wordlist of 4096 words). FixPhrase only claims accuracy of 11m, which isn't terrible, but won't locate a single parking space or front door particula…
If their accuracy is 11m, can we calculate their wordlist size?
I talk a little about my own wordlist choice here http://wherewords.id/+about my word list is here https://github.com/kybernetikos/wherewords/blob/main/lib/wor...
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..
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 thin…
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.