I just heard of "What 3 Words" in the comments section of the latest video by Matts Off Road Recovery on YouTube.

Here's a Link to it When you go here, you can input an address or location and see. If you have the 3 words, you enter them in the box.

It says it uses a 3 Words identifier for any 3 meter square location for any place on earth.

Supposedly this is much better than a street address because it narrows the exact location you specify down to a 3 meter square. This is great for which entrance to identify or use for a large building or area.

I looked at the website and decided to download the APP and check it out.

If I'm going to meet someone at, let's say Balboa Park in San Diego, or you need an exact location for emergency services to find you, such as ambulance, police, etc, they can find you in that 3 meter square location easily and quickly, no time wasted.

Anyone use this?
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Pretty cool.

But... There is no error correcting check-sum feature. So, for example, if I change one of the words in the 3-word location identifier for my front door from singular to plural, it identifies a location off the coast of the Philippines.

Adding an extra word probably would have sufficed to provide a robust check-sum.

And my kids elementary school teacher said spelling wasn't important anymore.

^^^^^^ Good point. I haven’t learned much about it yet. Maybe there is a way to electronically send that to someone else instead of verbally. But then you could just drop a pin and send that.

Technology and ideas march on.
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So they mapped the entire globe... in English? What happens to areas that speak a different language? Just as well be a string of letters or numbers in that case would it not?

Just for grins I pasted my three words into Apple Maps, Bing maps, Google maps and Mapquest and they all returned... WTF. Interesting, but If it's going to catch on it better hurry up, it has been out for ~7 years according to the Wiki.

The technology requires that both you and the other person have the app installed on your phones, have an Internet connection, and can spell correctly.

I would not give a three-word address verbally without using the military alphabet; the other guy might end up in Muleshoe, TX. (Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

Fenris –
frozen.cold.pizza and frozen.cold.pizzas, for example, are both unique, valid word-addresses/locations.
Apparently, their word dictionary doesn’t limit plurals, homonyms, homophones, etc.
I think the app only checks that the three words you typed match a location. The app does not check that the words themselves are invalid (e.g. misspelled); hence no checksum or error detection/correction.

That ap was used in a recent episode of "NCIS: Los Angeles". Hetty had circled 3 words in a book with ink that could only be seen with a special flashlight. The book had been given to Eric and the flashlight to Nell. When Hetty had been gone for a long time and no one knew where she was (Viet Nam), the 2 got together, found the 3 words and didn't know what do to with them. Mosley's sidekick Hidoko knew about the ap and they located Hetty.

flashguy

I thought it was interesting, but it would be more useful if they defined an entirely different set of coordinates - perhaps using polar coordinates with the equator and true pole as the center point.

Something to permit the definition of elevation. Could be more useful for drones/offer something which Longitude and latitude do not offer, as easily...

I still favor UTM coordinates. You can use them to specify areas of one, ten, one hundred, or one thousand meters square. There's a "full" UTM which specifies an absolute point on Earth (except the poles). If you and your partner are in the same vicinity, you can abbreviate it to a 6-10 digit number. The numbers actually refer to distances on the ground, in North-South and East-West directions.

And I found this article interesting- a used, and more thought out, version of what I mentioned...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geodetic_datum

They mentioned the modifications needed for using the UTM - all of which would cry out for something like “Which 3 words” or some other method of being able to, conveniently, tell a computer exactly where your front door/driveway/mailbox etc is, for a certain day of the year...

So you cannot assign a name to a spot as I assumed. They are ALL named already. Not quite as cool IMO, but I get it. It is the DNS of GPS coordinates. But allowing DNS to be registered would have worked better for memorable locations.

I sent this stuff to my sons. One had not heard of it. The other fired right back with a craft beer he was familiar with named for its location.

This seems to be one of those solutions to no problem.

quote:

Originally posted by Keystoner:
This seems to be one of those solutions to no problem.

You've obviously never tried to meet up with someone who's useless at navigation. Even with Google Maps or the like, it only gets them to the overall building/park/whatever, not to your precise location.

"I'm at the Walmart at 123 Main Street. Meet me at the northeast corner of the parking lot."

"I'm at Walmart. Which way's northeast?"

"Okay, meet me at the end of the parking lot away from the gas pumps."

"The near end or the far end?"

"If you're at the gas pumps, look to the part of the parking lot that's as far from there as you can get, then go there. I'm next to the tree."

"The big tree or the small tree?"

"There's only one tree. It's both the biggest and the smallest tree over there. It's the only tree over there."

"Okay, I'm here, but I still don't see you."

"Then you're obviously not here, because I'm the only one out here right now. Come to the tree that's at the end of the parking lot furthest away from the gas pumps."

"Oh, I thought you meant next to the gas pumps."

*facepalm*



So I could totally see the benefit of simply stating "Meet me at spicy.android.window", and they plug that into an app that holds their hand and gets them to within a few feet of you.

If they're that dumb, they won't be able to follow a map (or use the ap).

flashguy

Think “trying to tell a drone which door to use in a large building”, or, for the other coordinate systems mentioned “how to specify the location of an underwater object/the top of an antenna”

Frankly, it could also help on large facilities/farms.

Or, just any farm. Addresses don’t help specify which corn field a tanker of fertilizer gets delivered to. (Or tell a man where “Barn 12” is)