The point he's making is that as there is no structure to what3words
e.g.
123 Fake Street = horse.goat.shoe
127 Fake Street = platter.man.summer
123 Manor Road = goats.horse.shoe
The thing like GPS that uses 4 words instead of lat / long?
- Thread starter Cromulent
- Start date
The point he's making is that as there is no structure to what3words
e.g.
123 Fake Street = horse.goat.shoe
127 Fake Street = platter.man.summer
123 Manor Road = goats.horse.shoe
I’ve not used it but presumably it allows you to get proper coordinates from it, otherwise what’s the point?
Seems like a great idea.
No you just get the three words from the app.
Soldato
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its more useful when you think about using it somewhere without a "street address"
middle of a field / forest / ocean etc
"yes im at 4 the tree, forest, the forest, in the forest"
middle of a field / forest / ocean etc
"yes im at 4 the tree, forest, the forest, in the forest"
But how do the emergency services then find you if it does’t revert back to coords?
Err, by navigating to the same 3 word address
They can only do that if it’s converted back to actual coords though, so I’m bit lost why there is then a problem if you are somewhere else like Azza was pointing out.
Exactly. And? Why does that require a poorly written blog post about why he isn't clever enough to know that if he's at goat.bus.tree (23 fake street) but he wants 26 fake street, he can just walk up and down the road.
No, on the app, they type in the same three words, and it will navigate them to that address. Am I the only one getting this?
999 call, I'm at bob.car.mouse
Paramedic opens W3W and types in the search "bob.car.mouse" and it takes them to the incident.
So the app converts it back into coords and displays it on a map? Or does it literally give directions?
You have to pay to access their api and integration services to connect it to your C&C. As it's propitiatory you can't just access their service to decode the three words to get an address or lat & long so you can match them up to your data.
No. I'm guessing you don't know how emergency services C&C work or how they are mobilised.
The problem is if someone uses such an app and tells emergency services they are at "Table.Elephant.Pineapple" , emergency services turn up, and there is no one to be found, because the emergency operator misunderstood "Stable.Elephant.Pineapple", the 2 locations could be the opposite side the of the planet and you have no idea how to get even close.
If however you provided a street address then there are only so many possibilities within a city with a street sounding similar or the street number being one or two numbers out wont make a difference.
It is even more superfluous since you have emergency calling apps now that will automatically send your exact location so you don't need to rely on understanding voice.
But those coordinates could be ont he other end of the planet if there was a tiny mistake
This. I had an app that text my location if needed. Sometimes you don't have enough signal for a call.
What if where I am isn’t in a town or I don’t know the street name. It would also be relatively straight forward for the call handler to repeat back the actual place, eg I give my 3 words and they repeat back Wrong St, New Zealand.
Agreed though, this day and age, if you call 999, it should automatically just give them your GPS location without you needing to do anything.
When you call you will provide a description so that allows the operator to ensure a better location match, they may well ask qualifiers. With W3w, you end up witht he same kind fo back and forth except the call center has no way of finding general vicinity or verifying other useful descriptives.
And apps that provide GPS already exist, I use one when ever I am out in the mountains. Just click a few buttons and it enables GPS tracking sending a live stream of location fixes to an emergency response center. Complete free of charge for everyone involved, no proprietary licensing some useless API.
They address this in their about page:
3 word addresses are intentionally randomised and unrelated to the squares around them. To avoid confusion, similar sounding addresses are also placed as far from each other as possible. The app will account for spelling errors and other typing mistakes and make suggestions, based on 3 word addresses nearby.
So I'm going to guess that in your example the emergency services would type in Stable.Elephant.Pineapple, and the system would detect it's on the other side of the planet but make the suggestion that Table.Elephant.Pineapple which is in the area that the emergency services cover.
Or you could open the emergency app, select the service you require and tap send.
You can also text 999 with your copy and pasted lat and long.
It sounds like a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.
the apps are also useful because they can keep checking if there is any cell reception and keep trying.
No, that actually makes it worse. The fact that it is randomized is exactly the problem. The fact that phonetically similar words are far apart means there is no way to correctly derive the intended location. You are absolutely screwed if there is any kind of transmission/listening/problem.
If the names were not randomized then there would be some level of resiliency.
The system wont make suggestions because there could be hundreds of thousands of alternatives. able/babel/label/fable/cable/staple and all kinds or alternatives like ant.pine.apple.
It is a bad solution to a problem that doesn;t exist. There are far better ways of telling emergency services where you are.