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Why Bother with What Three Words?

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Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#51

Post by mannykannot »

hopler wrote: post #35
velcrovan wrote: post #7

There is another big problem with W3W that Terence doesn’t mention: it isn’t scalar. From another W3W-criticism blog post ( https://mwfrost.com/space-is-scalar.html ): “An addressing system is successful insofar as it enables us to execute the suite of cognitive tasks that constitute navigation. Associating a destination with its location on the earth is only one of these chores. “If you have a powerful computer in y…

I don't see the relevance of that complaint. People don't memorize their current lat long to 16 sig figs either. You'd still need a gps device or a paper map without w3w.

With lat/long, you don't need GPS, a paper map is surprisingly effective -- and, in what is the point here, with a paper map (or GPS), you don't need a link to What Three Words' servers. There isn't a good use case for a mnemonic for lat/long that loses the latter's spatial-relationship information.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#52

Post by mcguire »

adambyrtek wrote: post #45

I inherited a property management system where previous developers used what3words for storing location of homes (since reverse geocoding based on address is not reliable in some countries we support). However, after an internal review we realised that a lot of our UK properties have locations in Asia or the US... It turned out that typos in what3words often result in a valid location on the other side of the world.…

...in which we learn that the previous developers hated everyone.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#53

Post by mchannon »

W3W suffers horribly from "call for price". You won't catch Google or Amazon making you call and talk to a human being (on GMT time no less) before figuring out if you can afford their service.

I'm preparing my own version, truly open source (though with a premium component), with the following improvements over W3W:

•Length-optimized. If one character sufficiently describes your location, you don't need to tack on extras. A 12-character code with the last two lopped off will be imperceptibly close to the original.

•Precision optimized. Every additional character, no matter the value, will result in a location not identical to the absence of that character.

•Precision-focused. When a location is precise to the nearest 100km, km, m, or µm, the browser tools make that clear.

•Logic-optimized. With pencil and paper, you'll be able to figure out how to go N, E, S, W by X distance by adjusting a particular character.

•Spheroid-optimized. The Mercator projection is often held to be an imperialist distortion of the globe, and that's what traditional latitudes and longitudes use. Half the "namespace" of nearly every coordinate system is biased toward the poles. The distance between 89° N, 10°W, and 89°N, 10°E is 38km, but at 1°N, it's 2226km. My system has a simple and clever way to equally represent the dense equatorial regions and the sparse arctic and antarctic regions, and that equals shorter codes.

Watch this space.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#54

Post by nuklearwanze »

kowdermeister wrote: post #17

Our office location had a square named: [boom,bedroom,gagging]

I guess that's exactly what they are after: funny (or otherwise "engaging") three word combinations that are: (a) easy to remember, and (b) promote their service. - the default square when looking up the town i live in is leber.abhilfe.schnell (german), translated "liver, relief, quick", so maybe that's what their algorithm is optimized for?

Either way, the whole system seems pretty stupid: why 3x3m (way to high res for normal street addresses, much to coarse for anything else)? what is the problem supposed to be that W3W wants to solve? I sure dont see it...

location data is usually not shared verbally but sent via some kind of text medium - you just send GPS-coordinates from another (map-)app directly through your email/messaging-app. seems simple enough.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#55

Post by praptak »

enticeing wrote: post #43
hopler wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the relevance of that complaint. People don't memorize their current lat long to 16 sig figs either. You'd still need a gps device or a paper map without w3w.

I think the point is that ringleader.kilt.comedians and since.duplicated.backswing have no relation at all to each other, and don't communicate to the user their spatial relationship. On the other hand, you could infer that 1234 W Something Rd is nearby 1238 W Something Rd. EDIT: Also, given a set of lat/long coordinates, regardless of the precision, you could infer their spatial relationship as well.

"you could infer that 1234 W Something Rd is nearby 1238 W Something Rd."

Don't overestimate that. There are nasty exceptions where the street disappears and continues elsewhere without a significant gap in house numbers, especially in cities with a long history.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#56

Post by mcguire »

eruci wrote: post #33
zerogvt wrote: post #23

That -apart from being a brilliant idea- seems to be easy to replicate in open source software. Replicate not in being compatible but as a different system altogether. Or has that already happened?

Yes. I've built one of them. https://3geonames.org . Open source. Works offline. No database is needed. Based on geonames.org. I also know of at least 2 other open source alternatives (what3ducks and what3fucks).

It's weird that I'd never heard of this before, but there seems to be a vibrant community of parodies.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#57

Post by madeofpalk »

jpatokal wrote: post #4

There are plenty of alternatives to W3W, most notably Open Location Codes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Location_Code Alternatively, try a W3W parody: https://what3emojis.com/ http://www.what3fucks.com (NSFW text)

I looked up my old apartment on what3fucks - "dickhead pollock cheeky gayass" - which is surprisingly fitting

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#58

Post by estomagordo »

mchannon wrote: post #53

W3W suffers horribly from "call for price". You won't catch Google or Amazon making you call and talk to a human being (on GMT time no less) before figuring out if you can afford their service. I'm preparing my own version, truly open source (though with a premium component), with the following improvements over W3W: •Length-optimized. If one character sufficiently describes your location, you don't need to tack on e…

So your solution won't result in "coordinates" easily memorized by humans or easily translated to the very vast majority of map implementations?

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#59

Post by saalweachter »

praptak wrote: post #55
enticeing wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the point is that ringleader.kilt.comedians and since.duplicated.backswing have no relation at all to each other, and don't communicate to the user their spatial relationship. On the other hand, you could infer that 1234 W Something Rd is nearby 1238 W Something Rd. EDIT: Also, given a set of lat/long coordinates, regardless of the precision, you could infer their spatial relationship as well.

"you could infer that 1234 W Something Rd is nearby 1238 W Something Rd." Don't overestimate that. There are nasty exceptions where the street disappears and continues elsewhere without a significant gap in house numbers, especially in cities with a long history.

Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater here. Being able to naively navigate city -> street -> number is incredibly useful, and that it is occasionally broken doesn't make it an undesirable feature.

Re: Why Bother with What Three Words?

#60

Post by pojzon »

mchannon wrote: post #53

W3W suffers horribly from "call for price". You won't catch Google or Amazon making you call and talk to a human being (on GMT time no less) before figuring out if you can afford their service. I'm preparing my own version, truly open source (though with a premium component), with the following improvements over W3W: •Length-optimized. If one character sufficiently describes your location, you don't need to tack on e…

Would you mind to share a github or its still private wip ?
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