There are three major problems with What3Words: 1) There's no way to reduce precision. I can say "the left front door of the Avista central office building", but I can't say "the Avista headquarters campus" or "downtown Spokane".
2) There's no correlation of names between adjacent locations. The aforementioned left front door has a totally different name from the right front door. 3) It requires an internet connection. If I'm out hiking and a member of my party breaks a leg, I can't get on the radio and tell Search & Rescue my What3Words location: my map doesn't have it (and never will: see the precision issues), and my GPS can't display it. In short, What3Words has solved the problem of human transmission of GPS coordinates from one internet-connected device to another. But they're hyping it as if it were the ultimate solution to all your location problems, hence the derision. -- Mark On Tue, 12 Jul 2016 11:04:59 +0000 Jóhannes Birgir Jensson <[email protected]> wrote: > I don't know if they are using the English version in Mongolia but I > doubt it. You can already swap to 8 other languages on their website > (top right option). > > I did discuss Icelandic with Mapillary and they looked into available > word sets and concluded that it was more than sufficient to make > Iceland itself work in an Icelandic w3w implementation. > > The circle-jerk is strong here about w3w, they have a human readable > solution for GPS-coordinates (which OPL isn't sadly), they've pledged > to offer the source code if their business goes belly-up and seem to > doing a lot of good things. I'm slightly perplexed at the extent of > vitriol they suffer here. > > --JBJ > > Þann 12.07.2016 08:11, Janko Mihelić reit: > > So they are using the english version? What good does that do to the > > local people? It would be easier to learn the GPS coordinates. > > > > Janko > > > > uto, 12. srp 2016. u 09:47 Steve Doerr <[email protected]> > > napisao je: > > > >> On 12/07/2016 00:23, Dave F wrote: > >> > >>> This system [...] doesn't work in the real world. > >> > >> It's apparently used in Mongolia as of this month. So the proof of > >> the > >> pudding . . . > >> > >> -- > >> Steve > >> > >> --- > >> This email has been checked for viruses by Avast antivirus > >> software. https://www.avast.com/antivirus [1] > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> talk mailing list > >> [email protected] > >> https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk [2] > > > > > > Links: > > ------ > > [1] https://www.avast.com/antivirus > > [2] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > > > > _______________________________________________ > > talk mailing list > > [email protected] > > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk > > > _______________________________________________ > talk mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk _______________________________________________ talk mailing list [email protected] https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk
