[FoRK] What3words -- convert lat,long into 3 English words

[Eugen Leitl]

----- Forwarded message from "Stephen D. Williams" <sdw@lig.net> -----

Date: Tue, 08 Jul 2014 16:30:43 -0700
From: "Stephen D. Williams" <sdw@lig.net>
To: Friends of Rohit Khare <fork@xent.com>
Subject: Re: [FoRK] What3words -- convert lat,long into 3 English words
Message-ID: <53BC7F23.7050809@lig.net>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10.9; rv:24.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/24.6.0
Reply-To: Friends of Rohit Khare <fork@xent.com>

Interesting choices.  I thought perhaps they were using lat/long to
index into a dictionary, maybe with a hash, but it seems they have
semi-manually tuned the mapping of 3 words to every 3m by 3m square on
the Earth's surface, perhaps minus ocean space.  Nicer IDs, but you
need the proprietary database online for use.  They have "extra info",
but so far I don't see any kind of semantic tagging, which is sad.

I noticed GeoHash and related not long ago.  This is a new twist. I
was involved with helping the startup of a friend of a friend of mine
long ago called NetWord.  The premise was very close to the private
OneWord for What3words.  A while back, I sent a letter to the USPS
head suggesting a moveable 9+ digit unique zip code. This would allow
people to have a unique short address that would be looked up in a
database and sent to the currently registered location.  Perfect for
students, consultants, or others who move frequently.  And private
from the sender potentially.  No surprise: no response.  Then I
thought about a service that would open and scan your mail for you.  A
few difficulties, but would be useful.  But I thought better of it.
Another company did it later, using veterans to open the mail as a
security selling point.

Related links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash-36
http://geohash.org/
http://www.bigdatamodeling.org/2013/01/intuitive-geohash.html

Use of variable precision bounding box addresses in 2D or 3D, but closely held and proprietary:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_Area_Code
http://www.nacgeo.com/

Similar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_grid_reference_system
http://tools.wmflabs.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=Military_grid_reference_system&params=21_18_34.0_N_157_55_0.7_W_&language=en
http://www.colorado.edu/geography/gcraft/notes/coordsys/coordsys_f.html

https://www.maxmind.com/en/worldcities
http://opengts.sourceforge.net/
http://www.swarmly.co/
http://www.geoplace.it/
http://www.loc.is/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Geocodes#The_GeoDirectory
http://www.cdxtech.com/Blog/post/Latitude-and-Longitude-as-an-Alternative-to-Using-Text-Addresses.aspx
https://developers.google.com/maps/documentation/geocoding/
http://www.gpsvisualizer.com/geocoding.html
http://incurlybraces.com/gps-location-coordinates-android.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Geocodes
http://mygeoposition.com/
https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/maps/Kc0jjqzmlR8[1-25-false]

Just for fun:
https://tech.lds.org/wiki/Geo_code

Stephen

On 7/8/14, 10:14 AM, Gregory Alan Bolcer wrote:
> cage.gust.regular -- the ICS building at UCI.  5 feet later: trillions.socket.added.  Seems legit.
> 
> Greg
> 
> On 7/8/2014 9:38 AM, Ken Meltsner wrote:
>> Cannot decide whether this is brilliant or stupid:
>> 
>> http://what3words.com/
>> 
>>> From the FAQ:
>> 
>> What is what3words and what does it do?
>> 
>> what3words is a service which pinpoints any location on the globe (to
>> the nearest 2 metres) with a unique 3 word combination. This is far
>> more accurate than you can achieve with a postal address (if indeed
>> the location you are trying to pinpoint even has a postal address),
>> and definitely easier than remembering a set of GPS co-ordinates.
>> 
>> We also offer a service called OneWord which allows you to create a
>> customised, shorter, and even easier reference for any location of
>> your choice, accurate to the nearest metre.
>> 
>> Ken Meltsner at blues.skinny.nurses
>> 
> 


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