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What3Words: a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3m x 3m

what3words.com

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Re: What3Words: a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3m x 3m

#31

Post by icebraining »

mostly_harmless wrote: post #16

The biggest problem I see with these global addressing schemes is that they have nothing to do with the location, and they dont have any locality. Snake.Dog.Rabbit is in a location with no snakes, dogs or rabbits and is right next to Lamp.Chair.Guitar? Theres no visible logic to it. its just easier to say 123 River Road. By the name you know its likely to be near a river, and it will be right next to 124 River Road

But how many street names are actually related to the local geography? At least where I live - an old European country -, they're either based on the name of a more-or-less obscure dead personality (e.g. my street is named after a marquis from the 16th century) or after something that happened there decades or centuries ago (e.g. Merchants' street).

Re: What3Words: a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3m x 3m

#32

Post by adventured »

mostly_harmless wrote: post #16

The biggest problem I see with these global addressing schemes is that they have nothing to do with the location, and they dont have any locality. Snake.Dog.Rabbit is in a location with no snakes, dogs or rabbits and is right next to Lamp.Chair.Guitar? Theres no visible logic to it. its just easier to say 123 River Road. By the name you know its likely to be near a river, and it will be right next to 124 River Road

There is no logic to the system, the only purpose it serves that I can tell is to make the owner wealthy by selling squares on a grid.

It makes me think of the million pixel homepage:

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

In concept it's the same model, but for a map.

Re: What3Words: a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3m x 3m

#34

Post by icebraining »

tinco wrote: post #20
NKCSS wrote: post #3

Funny, they have a perfectly translated Dutch version they serve to me, it looks like a lot of effort and time has been put into this project.

Yeah, also a bit useless. I don't think many Dutch people exist that can't read English, or even that don't enjoy reading English. Those that don't most likely don't browse the web much either.

On the other hand, the same is not true of other countries, and it'd be weird to leave Dutch out just because they have more proficiency. The marginal cost is not that great.

Re: What3Words: a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3m x 3m

#35

Post by StevePerkins »

codingdave wrote: post #13

Clever, but not very practical. Addressing and city/state/country names are very well ingrained into our culture and have real-world meaning. We can understand the general location of an address just by reading it. w3w takes all context out of location names, and forces you to map it with a tool. I don't see how that will improve anything. As you can purchase a one word name for a specific location, this really just…

As a substitute for:

  10 Downing Street
  London, UK
... I see your point. However, as a substitute for:

  Latitude: 51.503363
  Longitude: -0.127625
... I would argue that "slurs.this.shark" is a significant improvement. (plus it's mildly entertaining!)

Re: What3Words: a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3m x 3m

#36

Post by amolgupta »

Assuming everythig and everyone is having a GPS device its good. But in real world, anyone would understand that 1st cross 2nd main is near 2nd cross 2nd main but its impossible to know if lion.chocolate.news is near to bottle.key.bed or half way across the world.

Re: What3Words: a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3m x 3m

#37

Post by cjrsheldrick »

adventured wrote: post #32
mostly_harmless wrote: post #16

The biggest problem I see with these global addressing schemes is that they have nothing to do with the location, and they dont have any locality. Snake.Dog.Rabbit is in a location with no snakes, dogs or rabbits and is right next to Lamp.Chair.Guitar? Theres no visible logic to it. its just easier to say 123 River Road. By the name you know its likely to be near a river, and it will be right next to 124 River Road

There is no logic to the system, the only purpose it serves that I can tell is to make the owner wealthy by selling squares on a grid. It makes me think of the million pixel homepage: http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/ In concept it's the same model, but for a map.

Some users have asked to give an additional name to a square so we have allowed them to. However the 3 word system is being integrated into systems where data connections can't be guaranteed, as it is algorithmic, it's only 5MB big which can fit on a smartphone and display/receive 3 words, regardless of whether the user is connected. Available for any devs to use as an offline SDK. Error-detection and voice input are also optimised for the 3 word system. I would focus on the 3 word system.

Re: What3Words: a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3m x 3m

#38

Post by dpweb »

codingdave wrote: post #13

Clever, but not very practical. Addressing and city/state/country names are very well ingrained into our culture and have real-world meaning. We can understand the general location of an address just by reading it. w3w takes all context out of location names, and forces you to map it with a tool. I don't see how that will improve anything. As you can purchase a one word name for a specific location, this really just…

This is more accurate than old school addresses. 3x3 is interesting as its the space a single person would stand in. So for instance in delivering a pizza, I'm in the back/front yard - this is better.

I always felt just stringing together latlong works, and can already be instantly typed into google maps, etc.. 41.9483,-87.6556

Maybe a DNS like system that translates friendly names to this string of characters eliminating the need to remap the world and replace what latlong already gives us.

Re: What3Words: a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3m x 3m

#39

Post by adventured »

freyfogle wrote: post #23
codingdave wrote: post #13

Clever, but not very practical. Addressing and city/state/country names are very well ingrained into our culture and have real-world meaning. We can understand the general location of an address just by reading it. w3w takes all context out of location names, and forces you to map it with a tool. I don't see how that will improve anything. As you can purchase a one word name for a specific location, this really just…

You're commenting from the perspective of someone who comes from a culture with addresses. Most of the world doesn't have addresses. Try to go to a meeting in India. It typically involves three or four phone calls to find the place.

You really think most people live at locations without addressing systems? How can we even prove that?

The only locations I'm aware of that that is true are: very poor parts of Asia, Africa, India, and maybe some of the favelas of Brazil.

With essentially all of North America, South America, Europe, and much of China, along with all of Japan, Australia, being covered by an addressing system.

I'd wager 2/3 of all people live in a location with normal addresses.

Re: What3Words: a giant grid of the world made up of 57 trillion squares of 3m x 3m

#40

Post by owenversteeg »

Vanzetti wrote: post #18

This is stupid on so many levels. What about floors? 3m x 3m in a skyscraper can be an address of thousands of people. And why even allow the oceans?

People use boats, and lat/lon coordinates are also sometimes useless without an elevation.
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