SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 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.