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from the http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIJBUZm1HoY dept.
When it comes to telling someone an address, words beat numbers and letters.
One company is betting that using words to designate a location might be a whole lot easier and quicker in a digital world than using Longitude and Latitude or street addresses. While their system seems unlikely to be widely adopted it does have a certain appeal when combined with a smartphone. Passing addresses to drivers on the road (or friends for a party) can be kind of tricky. Unless you can send it electronically, the chances of remembering a spoken address is slim, and remembering longitude and latitude long enough to write it down or key it into your GPS is zero.
However remembering browser.tapes.outing or limbs.pinning.honk is pretty easy. You don't even have to write them down. Hint: click satellite view to see what those places have in common. You can keep three words in your head long enough to key them into an app, and zoom directly to the address on your smart phone.
The system was developed by What3Words and is already being used in Geographical Information Systems, and other earth mapping applications where there aren't convenient ways to exchange geo-coordinates verbally.
what3words is a universal addressing system based on a 3mx3m global grid.
Each of the 57 trillion 3mx3m squares in the world has been pre-allocated a fixed & unique 3 word address.
Their geocoder turns geographic coordinates into these 3 word addresses & vice-versa.
Using words means non-technical people can find any location accurately and communicate it more quickly, more easily and with less ambiguity than any other system like street addresses, postcodes, latitude & longitude or mobile short-links.
People's ability to immediately remember 3 words is near perfect whilst your ability to remember the 16 numbers, decimal points and N/S/E/W prefixes, that are required to define the same location using lat,long is zero.
The company says "We want to give everyone in the world the ability to talk about a precise location as easily as possible." (And by "Give" they mean "Sell".)
There are free Android and iOS apps available from Navmii allowing users to navigate using a simple 3 word address.
Will it catch on? Betteridge says no, but if Google or Apple takes an interest it might become "a thing".
(Score: 5, Insightful) by iamjacksusername on Monday November 02 2015, @11:40AM
We have a system like that already extant. It is an amazingly flexible system, with the precision level naturally adapting to the required level, surviving countless wars, migrations, triumphs and disasters while still being an tremendously useful tool for communicating information about specific locaitons. In fact, it is the universal system used by every culture recorded and will likely be used by our ancestors generations from now. The system is called "telling someone the name of the place."
Do people really need a quick way to verbally exchange locations with that level of precision? We already have Latitude, Longitude and elevation when we need to be precise. We have electronic aids to generate that information. Telling someone to go to "purple monkey dishwasher" instead of "40.7484° N, 73.9857° W" is not truly helpful because, unless you already know where "purple monkey dishwasher" is, you still are going to look it up in a database like Google Maps to determine the location. On the other hand, telling someone "The Empire State Building" or "Uncle Bob's Orphanarium and Taco Stand" provides some useful information about the location as well as a shorthand for referencing the precise coordinates.
Basically, this company has re-invented naming places. Which is good for them because I am sure they want these 3 words to become valuable brands which they can re-sell to interested parties. "Purple Monkey Dishwasher" is trending now!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Dr Ippy on Monday November 02 2015, @11:51AM
As a walker, I like to visit places in the countryside that have no generally recognised name.
I would find this system useful.
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(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 02 2015, @12:02PM
Shill.
(Score: 2) by LoRdTAW on Monday November 02 2015, @02:09PM
You mean zombie shill.
That or Chuck Norris's character Walker, Texas Ranger. In that case, I'd apologize. Quickly.
(Score: 2, Funny) by kazzie on Monday November 02 2015, @02:19PM
Are you from Somalia?
anonymous.speaks.online [what3words.com]
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday November 02 2015, @04:17PM
Must be a Somali Pirate.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Monday November 02 2015, @12:32PM
It seems useful for that but I am not sure why it is any better than what we use today. How would you know the 3-word location? Because somebody told you or you had to look it up. Either way, you would need to query somebody (and they probably would show you a map) or some database or map to find the 3-word location. In that case, you might as well use the existing system since they both involve consulting maps. It just seems to me that this is trying to solve a problem that is not actually a problem. I once was verbally given got some really odd, but astonishingly accurate, directions to somebody's house:
"You are going to turn right at the 7-11. Don't turn at the 7-11 you want to turn at. That 7-11 is there to thwart you. Keep driving. You need to drive until you think you have driven too far, then drive a little bit more and then turn at the 7-11."
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Monday November 02 2015, @01:13PM
The counterexample is some (mostly Germanic descendant) areas of the country will have roads with over ten names. Its not unusual for a physical slab of asphalt to run thru multiple small political municipalities all with different street names, and have a state highway designation name, and a county highway name. Believe it or not the feds sometimes play a part when a section of "state route number WTF" runs temporarily over a stretch of interstate highway due to construction or something.
This can be confusing as hell for non-locals and even navigation systems. "So I'm trying to figure out how to turn onto state hwy 33 from county road A and all I know is I'm on Aspen Lane in WTF-ville" and it turns out all those names are the same road.
Naturally the best solution to having 89 million shitty overlapping "standards" is to add another new, even bigger "standard".
(Score: 3, Informative) by iamjacksusername on Monday November 02 2015, @02:05PM
Haha yeah I have a road by me that, for about 2 miles, has 4 different state and local numbers.
The relevant XKCD standards link: https://xkcd.com/927/ [xkcd.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jcross on Monday November 02 2015, @02:10PM
Exactly, and the new standard is even worse, because the place name changes entirely every 3 meters. Playing around with the map, there seems to be no coherence whatsoever between adjacent grid squares, and thus no way to know that two 3-word addresses are next to each other without converting them to a more coherent system. This is probably good for the company selling the mapping/unmapping service, but an inconvenience to most everyone else. What it probably is good for is telling a taxi driver where to take you, but then again, slurring your words a bit when drunk could land you in Outer Elbonia with a hell of a fare.
(Score: 2) by Common Joe on Tuesday November 03 2015, @06:50PM
It's designed that way on purpose. Having "Purple Monkey Dishwasher" next to "Purple Monkey Dishes" could lead to unintended errors. By having a completely different names, one is quite sure that a person meant this 3m x 3m spot and not the other 3m x 3m right next to it.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Tuesday November 03 2015, @08:57PM
That's what I figured too, but it doesn't necessarily reduce errors unless you know roughly where the location is supposed to be. For instance, say "Purple Monkey Dishwasher" and "Purple Monkey Dishes" both exist, and one is in my hometown and the other is across the world. If I'm telling one to a taxi driver it will be pretty obvious if I've got the wrong one, but if I put it on a package to mail it would not be. At the same time, if my house is 10 meters wide, it might have 4 legitimate addresses, all entirely different, and that's just counting the ones on the street frontage. One isn't always interested in 3 meter accuracy, and the situation gets even worse if my address resolves to an apartment building and I live on the 4th floor.
Where the old tradition of named estates still exists, there actually are three word addresses, although not with 3 meter accuracy of course. I know a person whose entire address is in the form , County , Ireland. Basically just three words, but the neat part is you can get some basic information about where it is without looking it up. In other words, the scheme has a transparent hierarchy which this new one lacks.
(Score: 2) by jcross on Tuesday November 03 2015, @08:58PM
Whoops, my angle brackets got eaten. It should have been "(Estate), County (Name), Ireland".
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday November 02 2015, @04:13PM
Even in places that are less complicated, you can still have roads with 2 or more names. And sometimes that becomes 3 names when you hit the city limits. It causes a lot of grief when Google will use the state designation even though the street itself doesn't have any markings to suggest the state designation.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday November 02 2015, @04:37PM
It causes a lot of grief when Google will use the state designation even though the street itself doesn't have any markings to suggest the state designation.
I've been surprised by that a couple times. Sounds like it would be trivial for the google camera van to OCR every sign it sees and only display turn by turn instructions using names actually visible on real world signs. Since it's blindingly obvious while they don't do that, I assume its some kind of patent insanity holding back progress.
Another blindingly obvious "why don't they OCR" / "must be patented" relates to landmarks. Instructions should have things like "Pass the prosperity gospel megachurch billboard on the left a half mile before your destination" or whatever to help you navigate.
My personal favorite came up just last weekend, you're cruising down a major arterial that is the border between two municipalities and there's an intersection turn left for county hwy WTF into the wilderness or right for Main street, and the locals only use the "cool" name so the verbal instructions are things like "turn left on to main" well there isn't a main street to the left because that's outside city limits! Am I lost or are they just really bad at giving directions, or possibly both?
(Score: 1) by Francis on Monday November 02 2015, @09:11PM
It's a matter of point of view. Around here we have highway 99, which is also Aurora within the city limits. Inside the city it's Aurora and it's not unless you want to leave the city that calling it 99 makes any sense. Somebody who's coming to the street from the east or west would turn onto the same street. But, in one direction it's Aurora and the other it's 99. I doubt most locals think about it like that. I know I don't.
Landmarks are definitely doable, I suspect the problem there is deciding which ones to use. Without them personally driving the streets and making decisions about what would and wouldn't be used as a landmark for navigation, it would lead to the same problem I was talking about where the directions weren't particularly meaningful.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Nuke on Monday November 02 2015, @02:17PM
I like to visit places in the countryside that have no generally recognised name.
So do I, in the UK, where serious walkers tend to use what is called the National Grid system which defines any spot to within 100 meters with two letters and six digits. !00 m is near enough to find eg "Go through in the gate on your left at SU 325798". No, you cannot remember it (so write it down or pre-mark it on your GPS device) but I would not remember a series of 3Word names either.
As for Third World nations not being able to define places, which I find very suprising, I suggest they get their acts together and start giving their places some names. The UK acquired most of its place names back in the Dark Ages, and streets are given names when they are built - mostly assigned by local people or the builders. It does not need planet-sized brains, vast amounts of money, computing power or First World aid to do it.
(Score: 2) by gidds on Tuesday November 03 2015, @06:08PM
Or, for identifying houses and other buildings (which is much more common as a target for navigation), we have a postcode, ranging in format from 'A9 9AA' to 'AA99 9AA'. This identifies no more than 100 properties; it can identify a single department or floor of a big business. They're very well-known and used everywhere in addresses — and they're already used almost universally in GPS, mapping, and navigation in the UK.
[sig redacted]
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Monday November 02 2015, @12:38PM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 3, Insightful) by isostatic on Monday November 02 2015, @12:51PM
In the country I live there would be "11A", "11B" and "11C". There would be a small sign next to the path saying "11B,11C -->"
How is a postman supposed to know where "fetching some coffee" is? He'll translate it to 51.123521N,3.234566E, and then pull a google map at that location. God knows how he's supposed to sort an address of "fetching some coffee" and "raining again today" and realise that they are next door to each other.
(Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Monday November 02 2015, @01:13PM
To follow-up your example, I have relatives in Cambodia. Outside of the city, addresses are... well, they exist but they are not readily accessible in general databases and may not in fact be useful. Sometimes they are basically "name + town". So, if I wanted to give the precise location for a house in rural Cambodia, I would just mark the location on a map and send the map or, if I did not have the precise map coordinates, send the town name and say, "Ask the lady who owns the coffee shop with the red sign once you get there."
(Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Monday November 02 2015, @01:01PM
You could have done that - just provide the postman and visitors the precise latitude, longitude and elevation of your front door. Since we are talking about meters-level precision, they would be most likely using a map anyway with some electronic means of receiving a location. Just use the existing coordinate system; no need to invent a new one.
It's like when somebody on a smartphone is trying to explain direction like, "go here, turn right, go 3.5 blocks, etc..." They have maps on your smartphone. They have a way to get the location on your smartphone. Just message (text, email, or whatever) the map location and save everybody the aggravation of potential miscommunication.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by richtopia on Monday November 02 2015, @03:49PM
The big difference between a place's proper name and this 3 word system is that the 3 word system is designed for portability; being largely algorithm based with a 10mb footprint. Without relying on some cloud provider, I don't know how you would find Bob's Burgers. Or, how you identify one McDonalds from the other beyond a lengthy verbal description.
I am biased thanks to my travels in other nations. East Asia in particular is difficult for a westerner to translate places into searchable/findable locations. For example, Japan's house numbering system does not follow the street numbering system found in the USA, but instead assigns house numbers for a local area. Combining this with not being able to read many signs makes for some frustrating experience.
As for Latitude and Longitude, it is great except for the one design goal of this 3 word system: ease of human communication and remembering. I've typed coordinates into my smartphone before, and it is frustrating, not to mention error prone.
(Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Monday November 02 2015, @05:01PM
You're not wrong about Asia. I have spent some time SE Asia and you do run into the translation problem. That said, you would still need to know the place you are going to look up it's 3-word location. Then, you have to hope the location is up to date and accurate which is definitely not a safe assumption. Vietnam is pretty bad about that outside Saion or Hanoi. If Google maps even has the address, the location is usually within 1 - 2 block radius of wherever Google thinks it is. You end up wandering up and down alleys. I was trying to get to an address in Nha Trang and the actual location was 3 blocks and 2 random alley turns down unlabeled alleys away from where Google and OSM said it was.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday November 02 2015, @04:14PM
Does anyone still give out verbal directions anymore? Whenever I give out directions I just put it in a simple SMS. Works just as well for coordinates. You can also attach a map from Google Maps or Here Maps.
Besides just how do these word locations work if one only speaks Swahili?
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Monday November 02 2015, @07:06PM
The system is called "telling someone the name of the place."
"Fort Mountainview" The tree fort I built in the woods next to an abandoned car doesn't tell you anything about where it actually is. Nor can you look it up anywhere.
We already have Latitude, Longitude and elevation when we need to be precise.
Yes, we do have that.
Telling someone to go to "purple monkey dishwasher" instead of "40.7484° N, 73.9857° W" is not truly helpful because, unless you already know where "purple monkey dishwasher" is, you still are going to look it up in a database like Google Maps to determine the location.
If I tell you 40.7484N 73.9857W will you remember it long enough to enter it into your lookup tool? I'll probably be able to remember 'purple monkey dishwasher' without much difficulty for several days. And in fact I've *already* forgotten the numerical coordinates; and I just typed them seconds ago.
Frankly, in principle, this is a really good idea with a lot of useful applications. A widespread public system with no costs attached to it could well catch on. It could be useful for geo-caching, it could be useful as a supplement to long/lat as an error checking code; or an alternate method of entering in coordinates into a navigation system, to remembering/sharing locations fishing holes, deer blinds, cave entrances, or rare flowers.
Potentially even military applications, likely against a different algorithm with a different dictionary to add a layer of security; potentially adding a fourth word to specificy the dictionary... then new operations can use new dictionaries. One part security through obscurity which isn't particularly valuable... but one part reliabilty... set the drone to drop bombs at 43.2114N 88.4241W [correct battery horse staple] ... as an error check.
Basically, this company has re-invented naming places.
You probably poo-poohed DNS too since we already had ip addresses.
Yes, 43.2113N 88.4222W works, but correct battery horse is less likely to suffer a typo, and is much easier to remember and verify by humans.
(Score: 1) by Osamabobama on Tuesday November 03 2015, @01:11AM
Both sets of coordinates miss the house and the barn. If you are aiming for a mobile target that is in that field, you will likely need real-time decision making capability, rather than bomb-on-coordinate targeting.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday November 03 2015, @02:49AM
Both sets of coordinates miss the house and the barn.
I don't know what this means??
If you are aiming for a mobile target that is in that field, you will likely need real-time decision making capability, rather than bomb-on-coordinate targeting.
Sure. In a new scenario that you presented yourself you'll need real time targeting. What does that have to do with the suitability of competing coordinate systems for specifying fixed points? And even in your scenario the bomb-delivery-system still needs to navigate to the field.
(Score: 1) by Osamabobama on Tuesday November 03 2015, @08:12PM
I was just commenting on your coordinates. There's no clear target in the Wisconsin field containing the lat/long you listed. The real-time targeting scenario was a supposition that you had other imagery besides what Google and Bing offer that might show a target for the drone. http://binged.it/1Hpq4rI [binged.it]
Based on your feedback, though, I suspect those given coordinates were arbitrary...
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(Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday November 03 2015, @09:12PM
Based on your feedback, though, I suspect those given coordinates were arbitrary...
Completely arbitrary. I'm thoroughly amused that it was somewhere almost interesting enough to have seemed relevant. I can just imagine with just a little more luck on my side there might be some poor farmer in Wisconsin wondering what I have against him and his barn; that it was targeted so precisely... :)
(Score: 2) by art guerrilla on Tuesday November 03 2015, @02:03AM
at jack-
i can't disagree with a single argument you've made (except it still obtains that 99%+ of us would have difficulty remembering lat/longs, vs this virtually foolproof mnemonic), but i still think it is a pretty cool idea, and probably has some great specific use...
(Score: 2) by iamjacksusername on Tuesday November 03 2015, @02:08PM
It is an interesting idea but I cannot see it catching on. There is precedent - another comment below mentioned Maidenhead Locator System which is a system used by some hams. In a basic 6 character entry, the world is divided into squares where no point in each square is more than 12KM apart. Further precision can be added by further subdividing the squares:
Link: http://www.vklogger.com/grid_squares_info.php [vklogger.com]
"
Yet again, the first character represents longitude, and the second character represents latitude.
Latitude = S37° 26.1'
Longitude = E144° 33.8'
Grid Locator would = QF22gn
Subsquares can then be further divided down to 8, 10, or more charcaters.
However beyond 8 characters, you may be better off using latitude and longitude, as this is an absolute method of referencing a position. Squares, no matter how small they become, always have a margin of error, depending where you may be within that square. "