- From: Adrian Hope-Bailie <adrian@hopebailie.com>
- Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2016 14:52:47 +0200
- To: vijay@redspider.biz
- Cc: public-geolocation@w3.org
- Message-ID: <CA+eFz_J1zPFdcU7Q8tTyYH-cacDe0eZyk=gXUZ8C079wanSAJw@mail.gmail.com>
+public-geolocation@w3.org (I think you dropped the group unintentionally) Thanks for those resources. I wasn't aware of the other two projects. On 20 January 2016 at 14:26, Vijay Datadin <vijay@redspider.biz> wrote: > Hello Adrian, All, > > > > I know of it and think that it suffers from the fact that it is not > systematic as an addressing scheme. You can’t tell that two locations are > near to each other just by looking at their What3Words addresses, like you > can judge with Latitude/ Longitude or Postcodes. > w3w is not intended to provide context it solves a specific problem: Providing an easy to remember and express address. If I am trying to tell my friend over the phone where I am in a large park or give my location to emergency services over a radio w3w addresses win. > It can only be used with an app and when your battery dies so does your > ability to orient yourself. > > > You are correct but as far as I can tell the data and SDKs to integrate this into apps or services is free and open. I think it's a mistake to assume this system can't live alongside systems like lat/long or other algorithmic systems like OLC. There are use cases where expressing a location in a w3w form is approriate and others where co-ordinates or other codes may be better. This is a digital world so discrediting a system that only work digitally seems unfair. Is there an easy way to calculate an Open Location Code on paper? One could make the same argument for digital/mobile payments. When your phone dies you lose your ability to pay for things. In that case it's time to get out your old plastic card/cash/compass and map. Open Location Code and MapCode present better solutions. Both are visibly > systematic, and the former is an algorithm so I expect it uses even less > storage than 10MB. More here if this interests you > http://www.caribbeangis.org/search/label/What3Words. > > > > Regards > > > > Vijay > > > > --- > > > > *From:* Adrian Hope-Bailie [mailto:adrian@hopebailie.com] > *Sent:* Wednesday, 20 January, 2016 05:43 > *To:* public-geolocation@w3.org > *Subject:* https://what3words.com/ > > > > I came across this project today and wondered if the group is aware of it. > I found no reference in the mailing list archives. > > > It appears to be a very clever way of addressing any point (3m x 3m > square) on earth using a combination of 3 words. > > For geo-location use cases where accessibility and the need for users to > remember their location are important this seems like an interesting > consideration. > > Example: A user that is using a screen-reader that is doing a location > query is far more likely to want the what3words address read to them as the > result of their query as opposed to the lat/long corordinates. > > The entire system can be embedded for offline use and is less than 10MB so > could easily be integrated into user agents either as a fully embedded > service or a proxy to the web service or a combination of the two. > > > > Adrian >
Received on Wednesday, 20 January 2016 12:53:15 UTC