What.Three.Words

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Jobbo
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What.Three.Words

Post by Jobbo »

I hadn't heard of https://what3words.com/ until this week. It's a way to replace property addresses with three words - each 3m square of the earth (approx - it gets a bit out of whack near the poles) is allocated a three word combo by this company and is uniquely located by it.

This seemed a very hipster idea until I discovered Merc is including it in its sat navs. I don't get it. It's a closed standard, it's a proprietary algorithm and it has no actual correlation to the place so has no logic to it. At least with a traditional US or UK address you can see narrow down the country, state, county, town, district, street etc even without looking at the postcode. It would be far more logical for any developing countries to come up with their own similar system of addresses, not (like Mongolia, apparently) tying themselves into a system which even when you're completely used to it, requires you to use an app to look up where an address is.

Anyone else heard of this or think it's a good idea for any reason?
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Mito Man
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by Mito Man »

There was an article about in on Boatshoes announcing the Mercedes partnership maybe a year ago. I thought it sounded useful for foreign countries where some addresses have accents or letters not in the English Alphabet which confuses some navs. Also it went on about potentially being used by couriers - you could tell them if you wanted a package delivered to your door or gate which also sounded good.
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Jobbo
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by Jobbo »

Fine until the courier's device doesn't have a signal out in the countryside and he can't use it. It's utterly useless without both a data connection and the proprietary app.

Also, it doesn't distinguish vertically so if you live in a tower block, your address will be something like Flat 69, 6th floor spandex.gorilla.flange. How utterly ridiculous when the block has 'Desmond Dekker House' on a big sign outside.
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Re: What.Three.Words

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Jobbo wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2018 9:43 am I hadn't heard of https://what3words.com/ until this week. It's a way to replace property addresses with three words - each 3m square of the earth (approx - it gets a bit out of whack near the poles) is allocated a three word combo by this company and is uniquely located by it.

This seemed a very hipster idea until I discovered Merc is including it in its sat navs. I don't get it. It's a closed standard, it's a proprietary algorithm and it has no actual correlation to the place so has no logic to it. At least with a traditional US or UK address you can see narrow down the country, state, county, town, district, street etc even without looking at the postcode. It would be far more logical for any developing countries to come up with their own similar system of addresses, not (like Mongolia, apparently) tying themselves into a system which even when you're completely used to it, requires you to use an app to look up where an address is.

Anyone else heard of this or think it's a good idea for any reason?
I've been arguing with people on their Facebook page. It's stupid. If you have a map with lat/long and some coordinates to navigate between, you can apply logic and decide in which direction to go, and you need no electronics. If you have electronics, which you need if you're using W3W, you can just use normal GPS. It's answering a question no one asked, incorrectly.
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Jobbo
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by Jobbo »

This is exactly my opinion. They haven't identified the need properly and the answer they've come up with is bad. That's before you go into the terrible proprietary and protectionist nature of the tech and the company behind it.

Alternatively if you have electronics you can look at a map. And maps have as much data as you want on them, but it's generally freely available. I wonder how many people use Openstreetmap? I used various maps as part of my job and Openstreetmap is often the most up to date and accurate of them.
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Re: What.Three.Words

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And, outside of delivering a smart bomb through the living room windows of brown people in far-off, resource-rich lands, how many people need accuracy to 3 square metres?
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by Jobbo »

That's 3 sq m in two dimensions - height info is missing, so not even ideal for smart bomb delivery :(
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by ZedLeg »

Mito Man wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2018 9:51 am There was an article about in on Boatshoes announcing the Mercedes partnership maybe a year ago. I thought it sounded useful for foreign countries where some addresses have accents or letters not in the English Alphabet which confuses some navs. Also it went on about potentially being used by couriers - you could tell them if you wanted a package delivered to your door or gate which also sounded good.
When I first read about it I thought it might be useful for shipping but it actually sounds like it would be as much of a pain as just having the random nonsense people put in their addresses.
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by Jobbo »

You can imagine an Amazon courier's manifest:

spandex.gorilla.flange
suck.tight.nuts
black.yahama.slow
pierced.navel.woes

Etc.
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by JLv3.0 »

NotoriousREV wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:03 am I've been arguing with people on their Facebook page.
Why?
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by Jobbo »

Because they are incorrect of course.
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by NotoriousREV »

Amazingly, if you get your 3 word address slightly wrong, you're in for a whole heap of trouble.

For example:

- limit.broom.flip is Camden Town, London
- limit.brooms.flip is Novaya Chara, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia.
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Re: What.Three.Words

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JLv3.0 wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:20 am
NotoriousREV wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:03 am I've been arguing with people on their Facebook page.
Why?
because they paid money to force their advert in front of me, so I responded, which costs them more money and also because they're wrong.
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Jobbo
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by Jobbo »

When looking for the old XKCD image, I found this :D

Image
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Re: What.Three.Words

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:lol:
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by Jobbo »

NotoriousREV wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:26 am Amazingly, if you get your 3 word address slightly wrong, you're in for a whole heap of trouble.

For example:

- limit.broom.flip is Camden Town, London
- limit.brooms.flip is Novaya Chara, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia.
Ah, but they say that is deliberate because you can tell you aren't supposed to be in Russia!

Our hamlet is called Barrow. I tried typing in one of the multiple possible addresses for our house and it suggested a place called Barrow with a very similar address, but in Alaska. It didn't show us as Barrow but under the name of a much larger village a few miles away. If you knew we lived in Barrow that would not help with the confusion.
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by Mito Man »

I don’t understand why GPS coordinates are not accepted. Every GPS has a setting where you can see your exact coordinate. Any numpty can enter said coordinate into a map and see your exact location. When you have a breakdown it’s complete PITA giving an exact location if you’re in a rural location.
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by NotoriousREV »

Jobbo wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:31 am
NotoriousREV wrote: Thu Jul 05, 2018 10:26 am Amazingly, if you get your 3 word address slightly wrong, you're in for a whole heap of trouble.

For example:

- limit.broom.flip is Camden Town, London
- limit.brooms.flip is Novaya Chara, Zabaykalsky Krai, Russia.
Ah, but they say that is deliberate because you can tell you aren't supposed to be in Russia!

Our hamlet is called Barrow. I tried typing in one of the multiple possible addresses for our house and it suggested a place called Barrow with a very similar address, but in Alaska. It didn't show us as Barrow but under the name of a much larger village a few miles away. If you knew we lived in Barrow that would not help with the confusion.
You or I might be able to tell we're not supposed to be in Russia, but does the courier system someone's just mis-typed my address into know that?
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by Swervin_Mervin »

Heard about it ages ago and thought it was a wank idea for all of the above reasons.

Added to that ISTR that a colleague got consistently different addresses for the same 3sqm tile depending on which regional W3W site she used. Total garbage
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Re: What.Three.Words

Post by tim »

Awesome, my toilet has an address. As does the left half of my garage, and the right! In fact one of 36 different addresses I could use.

Or maybe just 1 Norwich Road and a postcode will do just nicely.

I'm with Dave and Jobbo.
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