UKC

I recently came across this location app which I thought worth sharing. In their words:

"what3words is a really simple way to talk about location. We have divided the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares and assigned each one a unique 3 word address. It means anyone can accurately find any location and share it more quickly, easily and with less ambiguity than any other system. 

The service can be used via the free mobile app or online map. It can also be built into any other app, platform or website, with just a few lines of code."

https://what3words.com

It takes a moment to get your head round this. I'm still working on it. Technically it's a geocoding system. But what's it for? Don't we already have addresses? The obvious application is for areas of the world that don't have good accurate address systems. But it also has applications for personal use: finding friends in a big crowd is an obvious one - at a festival for instance. Or in an unfamiliar city perhaps. I'm sure there are more, including outdoor uses. It's an elegant idea anyway, and the only downside I can see so far is that it's a proprietary system, not an open standard. That may be problematic - for instance what are the implications (costs etc.) for developers seeking to incorporate in their software?

I read about this system too. I wasn't sure how you could work out somewhere on a map like you can coordinates... without having to look it up.

The issues I have are :

Hard to predict adjacent square addresses from known addresses. Unlike the grid system you can't work out how to move from one location to another without the app. 

Words that rhyme and could be confused give very different addresses and locations. So could be non helpful in rescue situations where the information is passed by voice rather than text..

However in terms of brevity its quite good. 

It works well, and Mercedes and some others are adopting it for their cars.

Its advantages are that it's easy to use and it's consistent.  I lose track of which set of GPS-ish co-ordinates work in what context.  If you're in a crowd you can call or send a three word address to someone and it takes them there.  It's easy to say cat.dog.burglar for example, but a GPS or OS ref is not so simple.  The summit shelter on Ben Nevis is hairspray.hardening.blazed for example.

If I enter that into my phone and ask it to navigate, Google translates that to 56.796639, -5.003423 which is not so nimble.  Anyway, it will take me 10:15 to get there (like hell it will, leaving at this time on a Friday afternoon).  Google also usefully tells me that I could walk it in 7 days, or cycle it in 2 (if I don't stop for anything)

I'm not sure what you mean about the prediction problem. When do you need to do this? I'm not sure that it would be useful in rescue situations in the mountains - but there may be scenarios? Useful to keep discussing this I think... 

You can't predict the next square, which in some ways is an advantage over a grid ref as one digit wrong can put you 10km out.  Entering hairspray.hardening.blaze  gives potential locations in Alaska, East Sussex or China, before completing the address (blazed) gives near Fort William, with other close words suggesting Murmansk or Alaska.  Flags up errors rather well I think.

Grid refs can also be wrongly transcribed, northings/eastings etc.  If you've got a device to generate 3words, all it needs to do is ping a text, email, message, whatspp etc.

In a similar vein, Theodolite will send a photo with GPS or grid location and google maps link to an email address.

Interesting, thanks. Theodolite looks like an amazing tool if you've relevant requirements. 

Thinking more about your point about voice and rescue situations, wouldn't voice be equally problematic with numeric references, perhaps even more so?

A possible advantage of "like sounding" words giving vastly different locations, is that if I tell mountain rescue I'm at a location and they look it up in Alaska, they immediately know it's not correct, and we can clarify my actual location.

For sharing location I often use the WhatsApp "Share Location" option, you can share your live location once, for 15 minutes or an hour, obviously it requires data service to send your location updates but works great in urban areas, big campsites etc. or if someone wants to know my arrival time I can just share my progress to them, not so useful in a mountain environment!

what3words is a fantastic idea; I've used it for a few years now.  It's integrated within Navmii, which is a GPS navigation app that has the enormous benefit of downloading the entire map for a country to your phone memory rather than pulling data continuously through 3/4G.  Several long overseas driving tours have been made much easier by carrying a piece of paper with the w3w coordinates of our hotels/crags/other places of interest - the phne stays in aeroplane mode so no risk of horribly expensive data downloads, but Navmii using the w3w coordinates works perfectly.  It is genuinely accurate, taking me to within a metre or two of my b&b or a parking spot for a crag, literally anywhere in the world.

The thing about making nearby coordinates wildly different is very deliberate; if you mistype a word, it doesn't put you a few miles out, it puts you a half a continent away, making error spotting very straightforward.

For my money, if I were building it from scratch, I've have used a bigger grid (maybe 5x5m rather than 3x3m).  That would have lost very little resolution but hugely cut down on the required dictionary - you do find it sometimes uses rather odd words, which not everyone on the planet might find easy to spell.  But that's a small quibble about a brilliant idea.

Is w3w multilingual...?

Yes. About 10 languages so far with more added all the time, they claim.

https://what3words.com/about/

There are a few problems with this. 

In there own website introduction, they make reference to its usefulness in parts of the world where mapping and positioning systems are not advanced. So we know from the start that this is for people who do not have the supreme advantage in mapping and positioning of being British or Swiss.

Next problem is that it is not open source but a proprietary system. Its purpose is not to save your life but to get money from you. You cannot know that tomorrow you will have access to method of resolving that position.

Having said that, UTM, and its military brother MGRS, cover the entire world already and UTM is Open Source.

Well it is after all just three words and anyone can transcribe those, right? Except that it exists in different languages and the language of the sender and the language of the receiver may not be the same.

In the UK, we have one of the worlds best grid reference systems and one of the worlds best postal coding systems. If we could just get all police, fire and ambulance controls rooms to be able to handle both of those systems appropriately and effectively then that would be excellent. Let's not muddy the waters.

That's a good point - hadn't thought of that.

Never though of that either...

I don't think the fact that the key audience is in under-developed countries is a problem is it? It still has wider uses. As for the proprietary aspect, I did mention that already. And to say it's purpose is not to save life but get money from you - I just don't see how that's a useful criticism. You could say that of any piece of equipment that's sold by a private company. Wild Country isn't a charity!

The languages issue is interesting. I don't know if it's come up as a problem but they do seem to be extending the languages that are available.

As for having good systems already, the postcode system is often inaccurate used with sat nav systems, especially in rural areas. There's not really a problem with having an alternative system is there?

Maybe I've been taken in, but I really don't think that's their aim.  If it is they're doing really badly at it; I've never given them a penny.

They do say that if they ever go bust, their final act will be to publish their system in an open access format.

We do.  But some rural postcodes are still pretty damn big, and frankly not many people are confident in using the OS grid.

Likewise, a major flaw in traditional grids is people failing to realise a DD.MM.SS is actually in DD.MM.mmm format.  So much room for error.

Haven't used W3W yet, but will give it a try for sure.  Very few people I know, even outdoors types, have any understanding of navigation coordinates, and this represents a reliable and easy way to resolve that.

Not many people left my school without being able to use OS Grid. Some may have forgotten it long ago admittedly.

The question that arises is do you want to do accurate locating or do you want to be Mr Kewl with the latest App because anyone who can access what3words on their phone can also access Arthur Embleton's 'Grid Reference' app. STRONGLY RECOMMENDED. Same in any language.

Postcodes are preferred by idiot bureaucrats living in cities as was demonstrated by a public organisation in Scotland a few years ago that tried to tell rural offices that they should be using postcodes instead of 8-figure OS Grid References. FECKING IDIOTS. That did not go well. Some postcodes are 15km across which is not quite as good as a 10m square.

But it doesn't resolve that. What3words does absolutely nothing to enhance your understanding or situational awareness. And the Spanish or French guy standing next to you is describing the same 3m square in a completely different way.

Long time ago I was working in an office where we had a service contract for our IT hardware and our printer broke. We phoned the contact N° & were amazed to hear they would have someone with us within the hour. Three days later the technician arrived - we were on Islay which has postcodes starting PA & the switchboard assumed we were close to Paisley

W3w is a pretty interesting concept but I've never really given it any thought. I do wonder how it copes at the poles though.

The OS grid isn’t quite so effective in sub-Saharan Africa. Nor is it particularly effective for some of the other uses mentioned, like locating people in large crowds. One size does not fit all. As for the ‘Mr Kewl’ jibe, I’m sure the masses of people who’ve already benefited from this technology in underdeveloped countries have more pressing problems. 

That’s an interesting question. I had a look and found this: GarethSL:https://support.what3words.com/hc/en-us/articles/208457629-How-doe... 

- the grid squares get larger, but not so large as to greatly affect accuracy.

I think this was mentioned on R4, not so long ago. It is being used in sprawling refugee camps and townships, where there may not be street names and house numbers. They gave the examples of taxis being able to send midwifes to the right house or get people to hospital.

We have to remember that a very large proportion of the world live in pretty crappy conditions. If technology is an enabler for all, then these are the sort of apps that we should be building more of.