Friday, December 04, 2015

What3Words, A Great Idea to Share Locations

What3Words.com is a wonderful idea to bring rational addressing to the world.
What3Words divides the world into 3 meter by 3 meter grids and assigned each grid square a triplet of words, like "browser.bride.uniforms".  Now, to identify a place in the world you use their three words.  You could use lat/long, which is more specific, but is harder to memorize.

I can see this saving a lot of energy and reducing the carbon footprint of delivering packages in parts of the world where addresses are not easy.  Tokyo is notorious for having complex addressing.  With What3Words, a taxi cab or ups driver would know exactly where to go.


Especially in rural areas or camp sites, What3Words would be helpful. You could tell your late Boy Scouts to come red.frog.one which is easier than go 200 yards down the stream from campsite 12, then 50 yards to the South.

My office is at 206 East 9th, Austin TX. The lat/long is 30.270568/ -97.739911,
but its easier to remember "quirky.together.styled".
Or a few grid squares over we have "provider.indeed.sensual" which could be more memorable.
(Perhaps if What3Words catches on, office rental space with catchy 3 words would command a premium)


What3Words really has a potential if Google and Apple will integrate it into their mapping products.

No comments: