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OkHi – Solving the lack of a physical address system in Kenya

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Re: OkHi – Solving the lack of a physical address system in Kenya

#41

Post by euskode »

seansmith1020 wrote: post #39
euskode wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the most advanced markets suffering from this problem: GCC countries. Most of their residents have the very latest devices, are at least as tech-savvy as your average Western consumer, and have disposable income. We conducted hundreds of different experiments, and most of them led to the same conclusion: pain by itself is not enough. These are people that have suffered from the issue extensively (including my…

We'll see how it pans out. Maybe you should speak with Timbo at OKHi and share some thoughts with him. All I know is it's a glaring problem, government's aren't going to address (pun partially intended) the issue, and it will be solved somehow. The technology is simple, but so often in these markets, the execution is complex. With you all being spread across 15 cities and based in SF I'd imagine it contributed somewh…

Yeah, there's no way to tell. Nobody has succeeded in the space so far, and that's because it is extremely hard to draw people in with "a functional address" as the main premise. Even if it's an address with which to do things that weren't possible before, it's still an address, and it's boring as fuck. Nobody cares about address update feeds, or any other gimmick you'd find in Foursquare's garage.

I am pessimistic but excited as a technologist and entrepreneur. Maybe there's something us and many others have missed that the team here will see. Myself, I would definitely look more in the direction of services like M-Pesa and Facebook than e-commerce or government. That's my two cents.

Re: OkHi – Solving the lack of a physical address system in Kenya

#42

Post by pjc50 »

Ireland also has this problem: http://www.myloc8ion.com/news/rabbitte-reversed-decision-to-...

I remember reading that there were multiple competing systems being proposed for national adoption, and some kind of controversy about which was the easiest to use. Can't find a reference at the moment.

I can't possibly see it working without government adoption; it's really something that needs to be part of the public service infrastructure.

Re: OkHi – Solving the lack of a physical address system in Kenya

#43

Post by euskode »

pjc50 wrote: post #42

Ireland also has this problem: http://www.myloc8ion.com/news/rabbitte-reversed-decision-to-... I remember reading that there were multiple competing systems being proposed for national adoption, and some kind of controversy about which was the easiest to use. Can't find a reference at the moment. I can't possibly see it working without government adoption; it's really something that needs to be part of the public ser…

GO Code from Alex Pigot is probably the best known one: http://www.gocode.ie/

Re: OkHi – Solving the lack of a physical address system in Kenya

#44

Post by euskode »

deftnerd wrote: post #16

I thought that What3Words.com had a clever solution to this problem but they just didn't seem to get any traction. They simply sliced the planet into billions (trillions?) of pieces geographically and assigned 3 words to each square meter space. This allowed someone to say "meet me at foggy banana stovepipe". Some of the downsides was that it only used the english language and that the next square meter over might be…

Is W3W dead? All this past tense has me curious now. Surely a unique approach.

Re: OkHi – Solving the lack of a physical address system in Kenya

#45

Post by tr33house »

AdamN wrote: post #29

Having lived in Kenya for the past year and a half, I can say that this is definitely a problem. Addressing isn't just an issue for people but also for efficient delivery systems. FedEx drivers get a route sheet when they get in the truck in the morning. This is generated by computer algorithm to be super efficient (i.e. fewer left turns across traffic than right turns with traffic). This simply isn't possible withou…

I am actually working on this. It's going to be an awesome solution... wait and see :D

Re: OkHi – Solving the lack of a physical address system in Kenya

#46

Post by doxcf434 »

brianbreslin wrote: post #30
doxcf434 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japan doesn't have street names (normally), they number the blocks and houses. Which is a bit confusing, since the numbers of the houses are not necessarily in order either, other than generally assigned clockwise as they're built. So finding an address with out a map or asking someone can be tricky.

There is an excellent TED talk by Derek Sivers on this issue and he uses Tokyo as an example, as it confused the early google maps engineers. http://sivers.org/jaddr

It's amusing since it's sort of like a .9 release of city planning that had some scaling issues, where as everyone else started at 1.0 to 2.0 and named their streets, and laid them out on grids. ;-)
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