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Why Bother with What Three Words?

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Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#201

Post by moftz »

maxerickson wrote: post #142
bradstewart wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Billions? You've found navigation by street number to be unreliable in 20+ % of locations? Either way, it does work for several billion other people.

I haven't personally found it to be the case, but I do know that people in much of the developing world simply don't have/use street addresses like are common in the "West".

Just because you use a system like W3W or even just lat/long for a rural address in a developing country, doesn't really mean you will easily be able to navigate to it. Many rural roads don't have names/numbers and may not even be marked on mapping software. Navigating to these kinds of places takes local knowledge (or at least a GPS, a recent topo map, and careful planning) to get to.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#203

Post by slavik81 »

ungzd wrote: post #149
nsxwolf wrote: post #114

Lost me at "The world is a sphere"

1) It has link to "Oblate spheroid". 2) On Google Maps and almost all other popular maps on the web, Earth is a sphere, see EPSG:3857

Of course, the Earth is not really an oblate spheroid, either. That's just a slightly more accurate approximation than a sphere. A quick look out the window reveals that the Earth is bumpy, covered in valleys, hills and mountains that are not included in the ellipsoid description.

As they say, "all models are wrong, but some are useful." The trick is to choose the simplest model that works. The right one to use depends on what you're using it for.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#204

Post by Erlich_Bachman »

mchannon wrote: post #146
scott_s wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What benefit do you have over Plus Codes ( https://plus.codes/ )? I only learned about them from this thread, but they seem to solve the problem quite well, and there's no premium component.

Plus Codes have little application outside building addressing. If I tell you I'm at 4CFM+JW, come get me, you're going to be pretty helpless, because I didn't include the city. Want to shift a little to the east? 4CFM+JX works, but 4CFM+JY? Whoops. How about north or south? Maybe there's a way to do that, but I haven't found it yet. How about upping the precision? The size of the square is maybe 4X the W3W grid cell…

> Mine just happens to be a slightly improved approach, and slightly less full of drawbacks than everybody else's.

Honest opinion: it is not. Plus codes is the one that has least drawbacks and most advantages.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#205

Post by chrisrhoden »

retroafroman wrote: post #200
DoreenMichele wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Regardless, this is a shit system and I can't believe anyone even bothered to create it. Also, I've never heard of it prior to today. Who uses this crap? From what I've read, it gets used by nomadic peoples and people where regular postal addresses have not been established. So, for example, parts of Mongolia. I'm not arguing with you. Just answering your question. I actually favorited your comment. I think it's very…

I remember they pitched Mongolia as a place this would be used, but I fail to see how it actually would be. I haven't been back to Mongolia since this came out, but I would bet good money that no one (besides whatever government entity signed onto (bribed/schmoozed) the project) would use this. English isn't that common among nomads that it would make any sense. Everyone knows the Latin alphabet, but reading and writ…

It is localized to other languages, as explained in the article.

One of the complaints in the article is that the different localizations offer uneven quality.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#206

Post by snowwrestler »

turc1656 wrote: post #195

The author didn't touch upon what I think is the biggest issue with this. I can be pretty damn sure that 51.50799,-0.12803 is really close to 51.51799,-0.12803 and even closer to 51.50800,-0.12803 just by looking at the numbers because they follow a decimal precision style location system. However, I have no idea if mile.crazy.shade is next to mouth.award.bowl or if they are 1,0000 miles apart. If anything, they shou…

Seems like the obscurity of the W3W approach is part of the strategy, which is to "own" positioning and extract a tax from it.

If you can extrapolate positioning deltas from the coordinates themselves, then you don't need to hit the API as much.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#207

Post by TruffleMuffin »

turc1656 wrote: post #195

The author didn't touch upon what I think is the biggest issue with this. I can be pretty damn sure that 51.50799,-0.12803 is really close to 51.51799,-0.12803 and even closer to 51.50800,-0.12803 just by looking at the numbers because they follow a decimal precision style location system. However, I have no idea if mile.crazy.shade is next to mouth.award.bowl or if they are 1,0000 miles apart. If anything, they shou…

This actually has a usage for emergency services. People call and don't know where they are. This app can let the operator send them a text with a link in that they follow and can communicate very effectively the precise location.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47705912

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#208

Post by cyode »

When I first learned about W3W, I immediately wondered if this same process of mapping n-word tuples across a discrete space could be applied to time. Similar to GPS coordinates, Unix timestamps like 1293432531 don't communicate much to a human developer about when in history they occur. Just use 2010-12-26 22:48:51 then, right? Sure, but then my brain has to worry about timezones, DST, etc. I feel like a unique English name for each second could be useful in some cases, like 1293432531 but (easier, to, pronounce).

Of course a lot of the shortcomings about W3W would apply to to this system too (offensive phrases, lack of relation between nearby points, etc.) Anyone know of something, open source or otherwise, that exists?

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#209

Post by romwell »

mchannon wrote: post #146
scott_s wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What benefit do you have over Plus Codes ( https://plus.codes/ )? I only learned about them from this thread, but they seem to solve the problem quite well, and there's no premium component.

Plus Codes have little application outside building addressing. If I tell you I'm at 4CFM+JW, come get me, you're going to be pretty helpless, because I didn't include the city. Want to shift a little to the east? 4CFM+JX works, but 4CFM+JY? Whoops. How about north or south? Maybe there's a way to do that, but I haven't found it yet. How about upping the precision? The size of the square is maybe 4X the W3W grid cell…

TL;DR: see [3] for an overview of how plus codes work.

-----------------

>Plus Codes have little application outside building addressing.

This claim needs some arguing.

>If I tell you I'm at 4CFM+JW, come get me, you're going to be pretty helpless, because I didn't include the city.

So why would you tell me that? Either include the city, or use a longer plus code that includes the city.

Example from the spec[1]:

>>Nairobi Youth Sports Organization and Information Centre in Kibera, Nairobi, has the Open Location Code "6GCRMQPX9G". Using the location of Nairobi, the code can be shortened to "MQPX9G".

>How about upping the precision?

Use longer codes! It's all in the spec[1]. Again, quote:

>>Using a single grid refinement step, we have an 11 digit code that represents a 1/32000° by 1/40000° area (roughly 3.4 by 2.7 meters at the equator).

Now, regarding this:

>Want to shift a little to the east? 4CFM+JX works, but 4CFM+JY?

This is by design; some symbols were omitted to avoid having words in codes (which, as TFA discusses, can be problematic, e.g. some places might not be happy with codes that have EVIL in them).

>Maybe there's a way to do that, but I haven't found it yet.

The spec[1] is open, and it's all in there!

It is not as simple as what you expected, due to the design constraint above. But that is a tradeoff that I think is reasonable. After all, these addresses are going to be punched into a computer anyway.

E.g. play with the addresses here[2].

I'm really excited to see more development in this space, because one size does not fit all. However, it's important to know what existing systems get right too.

(E.g.: English W3W looks like way easier to say on the phone).

Disclaimer: I work for Google/Geo, the opinions expressed here are mine, and not of my employer.

[1]https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/master/doc...

[2]https://plus.codes/map

[3]https://plus.codes/howitworks

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#210

Post by jjeaff »

TruffleMuffin wrote: post #207
turc1656 wrote: post #195

The author didn't touch upon what I think is the biggest issue with this. I can be pretty damn sure that 51.50799,-0.12803 is really close to 51.51799,-0.12803 and even closer to 51.50800,-0.12803 just by looking at the numbers because they follow a decimal precision style location system. However, I have no idea if mile.crazy.shade is next to mouth.award.bowl or if they are 1,0000 miles apart. If anything, they shou…

This actually has a usage for emergency services. People call and don't know where they are. This app can let the operator send them a text with a link in that they follow and can communicate very effectively the precise location. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-47705912

Why not just send them a link that notifies the operator of the exact location, immediately after they click the link and load up their location?
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