What3words: The app that can save your life
1–10 of 29 posts
Re: What3words: The app that can save your life
#2Aren't longitude/latitude co-ordinates even more precise? There's a bunch of free apps that give that information out. Am I missing something?
>I tried to get people to use longitude and latitude but that never caught on," Mr Sheldrick said.
Well, if it's a life or death situation Mr Sheldrick, I'm pretty sure people would catch on fairly quick
Re: What3words: The app that can save your life
#3They had a smartphone with working GPS and they didn't know where they were...
Re: What3words: The app that can save your life
#4Aren't longitude/latitude co-ordinates even more precise? There's a bunch of free apps that give that information out. Am I missing something? >I tried to get people to use longitude and latitude but that never caught on," Mr Sheldrick said. Well, if it's a life or death situation Mr Sheldrick, I'm pretty sure people would catch on fairly quick
I was thinking the same thing.
I believe it's just easier for the average person to communicate three words than two multi-digit-precision numbers.
Re: What3words: The app that can save your life
#5Prior discussions:
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15579017
- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8614198
They summarise as "proprietary & commercial, not obvious to humans without the service, and not compatible with maps."
Re: What3words: The app that can save your life
#6Something's rotten with article. It resembles an advertisement more than a news article.
If they had a cell phone and was lost in a forest why didn't they just boot up maps (they had bandwidth enough to download an app) and walk out of there?
Re: What3words: The app that can save your life
#7Aren't longitude/latitude co-ordinates even more precise? There's a bunch of free apps that give that information out. Am I missing something? >I tried to get people to use longitude and latitude but that never caught on," Mr Sheldrick said. Well, if it's a life or death situation Mr Sheldrick, I'm pretty sure people would catch on fairly quick
Isn't the argument also that when tired, stressed, cold, and maybe even injured, it's easier to tell a 999/911 operator three English words you're used to, rather than a string of numbers most people don't have any context for.
Re: What3words: The app that can save your life
#8This reads exactly like a press release from W3W, the private entity. I'm not clear on why the BBC thought it would be within their rights to publicise it in this way, other than they didn't know they were basically advertising a product (NOT doing so is a cornerstone of the BBC philisophy).
It's also entirely unclear to me why the emergency services dispatchers wouldn't just ask a caller to read out their GPS location from any webservice which can report it. Hell, they could set up "999.gov.uk" or similar to show exactly their GPS location.
Re: What3words: The app that can save your life
#9Aren't longitude/latitude co-ordinates even more precise? There's a bunch of free apps that give that information out. Am I missing something? >I tried to get people to use longitude and latitude but that never caught on," Mr Sheldrick said. Well, if it's a life or death situation Mr Sheldrick, I'm pretty sure people would catch on fairly quick
It's easier to say a string of words than a string of numbers. There's also more intrinsic redundancy against small mistakes, that with a co-ordinate could move the designated area by hundreds of miles.
I don't like the fact it's an opaque monopoly, but as a way to designate locations for human use, it's effective.
Re: What3words: The app that can save your life
#10Aren't longitude/latitude co-ordinates even more precise? There's a bunch of free apps that give that information out. Am I missing something? >I tried to get people to use longitude and latitude but that never caught on," Mr Sheldrick said. Well, if it's a life or death situation Mr Sheldrick, I'm pretty sure people would catch on fairly quick
Isn't the argument also that when tired, stressed, cold, and maybe even injured, it's easier to tell a 999/911 operator three English words you're used to, rather than a string of numbers most people don't have any context for.
what context does 'bears.agitated.trampolines' mean? It has exactly the same amount of information as 53.958332, -1.080278, not only that but if you've _ever_ tried to say words over the telephone on a bad line, you end up having to do the NATO alphabet (did you say bears or chairs?), so you're reading out letters anyway. Not only _that_ but _everyone_ can plug long/lat co-ordinates into something and get an answer, they don't need a proprietary piece of software to achieve the same goal.