Stay safe wherever you are, kids! Some good advice for UK viewers is to register your phone to text 999 in case you find yourself with too little signal for calls or internet, but just enough to send a text. TEXT THE WORD ‘REGISTER’ TO 999. STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND DO IT NOW! If anyone’s got any suggestions for tips in other parts of the world, please leave a comment below! And finally, anyone for whom a 17-minute RUclips video isn’t enough detail will enjoy security researcher Cybergibbons’ blog posts about the algorithmic issues with what3words: cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-suitable-for-safety-critical-applications/ (All other citations and further reading can of course be found in the video description.)
Lesser combination instead of 3m -> 57 trillion squares 5m -> 21 trillion squares with any no of word combinations 2~3 will be measurement vise more std.
To be offended by a randomly (in effect) generated permutation of words makes about as much sense as to choose to be offended by a rude shape in the clouds. Also, let's not forget that, just as beauty is in in the eye of the beholder, offensiveness is in the mind of the beholder. The "offensiveness" is not in the phrase itself. It only exists as a result of someone choosing to be offended (or since that isn't operationally defined, better to say, "claiming to be offended").
@@stepheneyles2198 You might as well look in a table of random numbers and complain that 666 is there. Or look at a long book and complain that one of page numbers in 666.
100% agree! Offense is in the mind of the beholder. It’s random, make a joke of it so you remember it better. 99.99% of the world will not know it exists. And fewer will care.
A few technical/algorithmic points: W3W effectively translates bounded GPS coordinates into a dictionary of words. The problem is that the direct literal translation of GPS coordinates to the base-40000 corpus results in the weird combinations. Because there are 57 trillion combinations you can't just make this a simple database lookup, it requires a mathematical base conversion, that's the root of the problem. You can't just update a database to make a location less offensive or less confusing. A technical solution to this is to provide a "patch list" database of coordinates that resolve to a different word combination that is more unique or less offensive, but that patch list has to ensure there are no collisions. The W4W proposal has a couple more challenging issues. Aside from the words.in.inappropriate.order, which also requires a patch list (you will never have an algorithm that doesn't offend someone), you are changing the grid spacing over water. This requires a database of geofences to determine the difference between land and water, but more importantly it makes the algorithm non-orthogonal. You have to restart your base reference point in "water" zones because you cover 4x as much area for each address, if you simply continued the smaller grid over water then the approach is orthogonal, but you don't have enough words in the corpus to express all possible locations. A simpler approach would be to divide the globe into 4 quadrants (just like lat/lon has 4 quadrants), and prefix your location with the quadrant. Then you can have duplicate addresses but they are separated by 180 degrees, which is a simple way of de-conflicting addresses. That approach avoids geofences and orthogonality problems.
All good points, thanks! I am not a geo/mapping expert by any stretch, but when I did the calculations for 4WFW the grid size change made a big difference in terms of number of words, so it seemed potentially worth it? docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wYEkseg1vbmkOzh-ZkuPHD2zn2vB5DvdXkOM-5Mnif8 w3w is geofenced too (it uses simpler words over more densely populated regions), so it’s not a disadvantage relative to that… Though you’re right, orthogonality would be nice! (As mentioned in response to another comment, being able to use an even number of words as a coordinate system is a potential advantage.) The way I’d make it offence-free is have few enough words that you can remove any with problematic connotations… As I said in the video, it probably wouldn’t remove all mildly hilarious ones, but I think you could do away with a lot of the issues! As @cavalrycome suggests, you could try using just nouns, which could be a good start. :)
@@DrAndrewSteele I guess the answer lies in the objective. Is the objective to provide a "lost and found" coordinate system or to provide a generalized location system? As you pointed out, any such system like W3W suffers from a lack of dimensionality. Therefore it seems that a short-code system is really only viable for lost+found type location mapping. Certainly a 5x5m grid is sufficient for lost+found, but if that's the objective, a larger area would work just as well. Make the grid 10mx10m and your calculations show an orthogonal algorithm would only need a ~1500 word corpus. If you break that up into quadrants, it reduces the amount to around 1063 words. If you allocate more words than necessary then you should have "spare" locations that don't conflict and you can replace offensive phrases with the nearest least offensive phrase. Say you allocate 1200 words and have 4 quadrants. For the purposes of search and rescue you don't even need a quadrant value, since you will be searching in a locality anyway. If this is something that interests you, create a Github repo to discuss this and have proof of concept code. Having a base-1200 corpus when only 1063 is needed is like having a sparse hash table. 1063 values will map to 1200, but you'll have some values that don't map, so those unused values become spares that can be used to replace offensive phrases. I think it might be a challenge to come up with 1200 simple nouns that translate from English into other Languages easily. Maybe the answer is to start with a non-English language and work backwards?
@@eformance Totally agree, it really does depend on the problem you’re trying to solve. 3×3 m seems not precise enough for addresses but so precise as to cause loads of problems, for example! 10×10 seems maybe a bit big for meeting someone in an urban environment? But even then, you’re not more than 7 metres or something away, and on average 3.5 or something, so maybe that’s the easiest solution…
It seems to me that the patch list could make use of reserved words that are never used in the algorithmically generated IDs and can only appear when invoked by a moderator. (With only 40,000 words in the dictionary, there must be heaps of more obscure/unusual words that could be deployed in manual patches). So "remove.dark.people" could be manually overridden with eg. "remove.dark.triceratops" (where triceratops is a rare manual-only word that cannot appear otherwise). With human oversight to manually replace these problematic IDs as and when they are reported and with manual checking that none of the 'replacement IDs' collide with each other (which ought to be much simpler matter than checking them against every possible algo ID) the problem could be fairly easily taken care of.
the algorithm seems to be a bit more complex then a some math conversion, I found out that most of the words that I have searched for fun seems to be all on land, they do map out the ocean and you can get codes for that too but it seems they made the ocean words longer and more complicated then the words on the land which is pretty interesting
I've been following W3W since its release although I have not used it extensively. The Four-Word option sounds very promising and I like the idea of eliminating plurals, etc. Very good analysis.
Like any system there will be shortcomings. As another poster stated, you are unlikely to use this as a way to identify somewhere in a high rise. In that case you would use the regular postal address but it is useful to identify which entrance of that high rise you should meet at. The argument that the words might be confused if calling on a bad line is true, but is also equally true for trying to read a string of numbers for a GPS coordinate.
What I learned mostly from your video is that if I am lost, I need to VERY accurately communicate my 3 word location, and verify that the emergency crew reads it back absolutely correct. In an emergency situation I could care less how offensive the words might be to me or anyone else!!
I've used w3w since its release. I use it as a driving app with Google maps. Found it better than just Google maps all round. The issues on this video aren't going to apply to the vast majority of users. I don't plan on going to Alaska any time soon.
A couple of extra bits - smart phones that have GPS (needed for W3W to work) should already send your location automatically when calling emergency services, avoiding *any* words or mistakes. But even when not, a simple SMS of a URL can allow your location to be passed automatically with even poor signal coverage, again avoiding any words - a system some search and rescue that are not on emergency services numbers already use. Finally the T&Cs for W3W actually say to read and understand all of the T&Cs before use, and check them before each use, wasting a lot of valuable time if you actually follow the terms they have set. Oh, and they also say they cannot be used where the use could conceivably lead to loss of life, something that could apply in any emergency use situation. They also say you must not rely on their products, that is part of their terms too!
Wow, great find! (You read the T&Cs?! :) ) I can see why they want to cover themselves here, but it does seem pretty amazing that their own advertising strategy directly contradicts their own terms of use… And check them before each use is hilarious…whatRead4000wordsThenSay3words doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…
I quite agree! The first time I heard about w3w I thought, as my son would say -'wait, what?!, you have to use your GPS smart phone to run and app to get 3 words communicate your location?'
Yes, the app uses the limited accuracy of your phone’s GPS to determine the closest set of words assigned by W3W. Three words which are easier to convey and comprehend than the standard Lat-Long coordinates.
Great video Andrew and as a geospatial professional for 4 decades I understand and agree with everything you said relating to those topics you discussed, very well-articulated BTW! So, I'm a stickler about correct datums, coordinate systems, positional accuracy and I'm happy communicating in coordinates and decimal places, however; I also love W3W for exactly what it is actually great for, which you also pointed out, finding a discreet location that doesn't have a street address and passing it on to someone else so they can also identify that same square on the same or alternate mapping app - yes it has some idiosyncrasies, but man it has some great uses and people should give it go to see where it can be useful for their own situations. My 3 words to those who comment but haven't actually used it: "try.it.first". W3W does use, but doesn't require, GPS to get your location; the first of two differences to other addressing systems is the overlaid base-grid that happens to provide the second difference, an alternative to an 'address' where there isn't one. If you happen to know where you roughly are, want to be, or looking for, just open the W3W app and move the basemap or photomap with your...well...digit. It's perfect for providing a location to someone for them to navigate to, e.g. I've sent one to my son showing the exact carpark space (yes outdoor) where I left his car for him to collect - I didn't care what the 3 words were, didn't have to, neither did he. Whether you're at the beach, in the park or trying to relay or find the location of a shack in a shanty town, or the entrance gate to a property, especially very large ones, W3W is perfect for that - just not everything - find your own uses for it, "be.pleasantly.surprised". In Australia, we have a great emergency services app, Emergency Plus, which provides your location in multiple forms as soon as you open it, including street address, Lat/Long, your location on a basemap, and you guessed it, W3W. Plenty of accurate information for the emergency services responder - if they get it wrong from there, it's their fault.
Another problem with having a private company in charge of a system like this is competition. The concept is simple enough to copy and using the patent to prevent copycats will only go so far. It won't be enforceable in some parts of the world and it doesn't last forever. Much like bitcoin, if there's profit to be made then there will be copycats and spinoffs. And then you need to know which system the rescue service you have called is using and download the right app to match. A free and open, globally agreed system has no profit, and therefore no incentive to spin your own version off.
"globally-agreed" is the tricky bit. There are already many open-source attempts at reducing the complexity of geographic coordinates, but none of them has emerged as the clear winner.
Good god. We can't even get a 'globally agreed system' to agree on having the same emergency number... such as 999 or 911. Some even use different numbers to call fire vs police vs. medical. Bottom line... if you don't like W3W.... don't use it or recommend it. Same goes for the other choices that people insist on complaining about, such as the evil Google, the evil Amazon, the evil Facebook (Meta). If you don't like it.... don't use it... and sell your stock in the company.
Having worked on the 999 emergency line some ten years ago we were then able to get the Northings and Eastings for mobile phones instantly. This would back then allow us to locate a phone within approximately 25 metres. If it was critical and indoors we could then get the subscriber details from the provider or pinpoint the phone to within a few feet.
Bizarrely, the one time I called 999 in the last few years the operator didn’t even know which TOWN I was in! I told them which street I was on and they were like ‘slow down, XXX street, which town?’ I thought the auto-location thing had been deployed universally but apparently not! Glad to hear it works at least somewhere though, and great to hear from someone who’s actually dealt with 999 calls :)
@@DrAndrewSteele cheers for the response. That is odd. As I stated it is ten years since I worked there so things might have changed. However, as I can not see technology becoming less effective I have to suspect that you connected with someone who did not know their job. That’s not ideal when the 999 service is literally contacting them is more often than not a life or death situation.
@@deanwal1962 Thankfully that one wasn’t life or death! But yeah, it would be odd if things had gone backwards. Here’s hoping the tech and training for new operators has solved this by now. :)
No we didn’t. However, it may be different for Mountain Rescue. Back when I worked for BT we (999 Operators) only routed calls to the Fire, Police, Ambulance and very occasionally to the Coastguard. If I recall correctly calls requiring Mountain Rescue went through to the Police. Once through to the I am almost certain that we were required to pass on the Northings and Eastings.
Obviously, you don't know that MRT's use OS National Grid References in the UK, not Lat Lon, that's for adding your confusion in!..... W3W does have its benefits if the user is on a roaming call some info is better than none as MRT's can't call them back. Also if you have the wrong location autosuggest that W3W supply is a great benefit. I have criticised W3W before, now I have a better understanding. It's a tool in the toolbox to benefit emergency services
Id say use 4 words, but keep the 3x3m for the land, and make 9x9 for the ocean. However, make them 3x3x3m upto a certain hight where it makes no sense, like the top of everest (but keep the ocean 2D cus it's the ocean) Or we could adjust how many height words are given depending on the geography (and buildings) of the area. It might be a headache to implement, but it would help convey far more information about your location. Like if youre stuck on a bridge or in a tree.
I think what3words has limitations but it is excellent for places without an address. If you were to call emergency services for a problem of floor 10 of a building most people would have no trouble using the address i.e. floor 10 London House High Street Blanktown. Indeed if the address is known you would not need what3words. But in places you do not know where you are or do not have an address it would work fine and certainly a lot better than co-ordinates. It would seem unlikely people in rural Russia would use English words whether offensive or not. Stuck on a mountain would you care if the 3 words might make an offensive phrase? No.
It is massively worse than co-ordinates for emergency services. If you can use W3W, you can use any number of SAR designed location systems - which are not only more accurate (8 decimal place UTM is standard) - they are heirarchal (an incorrect UTM location will still point us in the right direction - whilst a W3W location will send us the complete wrong way) and most importantly - they tell us how accurate the co-ordinates are - say you have poor tracking due to a low quality GPS antenna in your device, or limited overhead sattelites, or obstructed path to sattelites, your GPS coordinates can often show areas several kilometres in size - a W3W location will just pick the centre of that HUGE area and say you're there - a proper location system will tell us how big the margin of error is. W3W is a stillborn concept - and it being advertised in the public safety role is an example of venture capital placing start up dollars above human life.
My problem is that it explicitly excludes geographical relationships (I know that I am on a trail but don't know how far I progressed. I may have passed through all sorts of w3w addresses, no way I can tell only 2 of those that stayed constant during my hike). I also may not know my precise location (due to being in a gorge in southern France for example where GPS precision drops significantly) I would want to be able to give a less precise address without the implication that I know where I am within those 3 meters... Due to reflections off the gorges walls I may be several 100 meters off in any direction. With GPS I can use the number of digits I pass on to the rescuers to imply a precision, instead of giving 6 digits after the decimal point I can give 4 digits, thereby widening the search area but the rescuers will know that lack of precision and come prepared...
Both very good points! Representing uncertainty is particularly hard in a words-based system…maybe you could somehow cleverly encode it into the words but that might make it even worse at geographical relationships! Hmm.
Computational linguist here. It could be good to limit the words to just nouns so that you can't accidentally make sentences that mean potentially offensive things. I also wonder if it would be possible to make use of some characteristics of the words that are not being used in the system you describe, like which letter they begin with to indicate things like height or to indicate the larger geographic area the square belongs to. For instance, having person.man.woman.television and papa.meat.witch.tan both belong to an larger area designated p.m.w.t (from the first letters of each word). This would allow rescue workers to at least narrow things down if the words weren't heard correctly for example. Just thinking out loud.
Great idea! And great example hahaha It’s also potentially part of another good argument for four-word addresses which I cut for space reasons: having an even number of words allows you to use them as x/y coordinates, so p.m could be a large latitude-ish square and w.t a large longitude-ish one.
2 letters gives you a division about half a degree when applied naively. Would there be an advantage to a structured ordering that repeats around the globe so a.b.c.d is for example a ~5x5km area inside a larger ~3000x3000km area? So locally just the letters tell you a general place that is not globally unique but is still decently specific if you are free to make an assumption about where the call came from. Then the full 4 words would still be globally unique and specify a more exact location. Knowing places near you all start with similar letters may help filter some really absurd but similar sounding word locations, but if all the words near me start with b.c or b.d for a degree of distance that might make hearing things even harder.
Another problem I see with it are the square system itself. My house has one address, it has also 1 specific address code (Eircode in Ireland) but it has 27 w3w combinations. Imagine an emergency situation at a mall or so. Emergency services would get multiple contacts but with different combinations and they would have to translate them and then collate to know that they already dispatched a response to it. Your 4 easier words list sounds better but the final list should be going through accent screening, especially involving foreigners that aren't native speakers.
I overcame that by selecting the w3w code for my front door grid. My house is a stand-alone residence, there are three w3w codes from the footpath kerb on the street to my front door, so saving the grid in which my front door is located gives emergency services, postal, delivery, etc an exact location.
Well said Ray, Greg - you say your property is covered by 27 squares but you're happy with just the one address for your property, so imagine when the emergency crew arrive at your address, they then have to find their way in and find you somewhere on that property. At your disposal now, you have 27 pin point areas you could tell them exactly where to find you by. You could pin point exactly which gate to enter etc (should that be necessary for them to know). As for the point about multiple calls from different locations in a mall - I think people are forgetting that you don't just ring the emergency centre and say 'Fire at town.chair.lift' for example and then put the phone down leaving them wondering if this call could be related to the last one they had, they talk to you and confirm where the location is, they will not think there are fires all over the place as you are suggesting.
I used it to save some nice photo locations or tell my buddy where i am with my fishing gear and tell him so easily my location which has no address. It worked fine. I understand the problems that can occur, but so far they have never affected me or occurred. The 3 words with a literal description of the location are then even safer. So for my needs it is working good… The 4 words option and bigger squares sounds good for me and should be considered. Who needs 3meter accuracy? even 20meter would be exact enough.
I broke down on the motorway. Calls insurance, could barely hear them for the sound of trucks. They insisted I download this P.O.S app. My GPS / 5g etc is always on by default. All I got was a blank white screen showing a dot & no way of telling me where I was. No button to locate me. I've avoided this app by my own intuition up to this point & it looks like I was right. After uninstalling it, they then proceeded to spam me to death for a few weeks. Bogus behaviour. Dodgy data collecting company. Download a simple grid reference app instead.
Yes you are obviously a very clever young man, and you made some valid points, however if I was ever in a situation that I needed help but hadn’t a clue where I actually was, (happens more and more these days), I don’t think that I would be troubled by some “politically incorrect” “what3words”! I appreciate that the exact what3words need to transmitted. So until someone comes up with a better solution, my vote goes to what3words.
I totally agree with you 5m on land and 10m on sea, extra words add to it or even numbers. You pointed out the things could be improve for better purpose. Can't argue with corporate wants to make $$, the world is going mad.
I am using W3W to tell people the location of trees. Readings on my phone tell me the GPS inaccuracy. This can be 10s of meters. If the tree is in a street I use the initial reading to go to the web site and use the street view to more accurately pinpoint the centre of the tree. If the tree is in a wood I can't pick out a particular tree from the large green area so the W3W is less useful, but it is still useful. Obviously any system will be limited by GPS accuaracy.
Also, what gets me is people manage to read 16 digit credit card numbers when ordering a curry and that works, so actually reading a numeric location with a bit of spacing and a check digit is not that hard, honest.
If you are at home you can find more than one addreess depending on where you are in the room, if one address offends you , move a little to the left or right and find a different address. I feel this is very picky. I guess it has to be given its question of what is wrong. I am sure that if I phoned for help I would want to be sure that my position was known by spelling the words as well. I think it will be a while before WTW is used as the sole means of giving an address. It is a bit like going into the mountains relying on sat nav without a map and compass to fall back on. WTW is a potentially extra safety tool.
The larger the list of words, the more precise the address can be, coupled by how many words you use. Sure, you can simplify the amount of words used by making the squares bigger, but then the mapping system won’t be as precise. It depends on what you plan to use it for, even geocoordinates can be bigger areas if you use less digits.
I was having trouble wrapping my head around the benefit of W3W. It seemed the only difference between sharing your location with W3W vs sharing your location with traditional maps is if you are trying to describe your location over the phone, something I would never do. Whether your location is being shared via an app, or from something like the emergency feature in an Apple Watch, the receiving party simply gets a clickable link. When an emergency situation is happening, I prefer to use an app called “Parachute” because in an emergency their is a lot more useful details it will gather for you then just your location. If you were in a location with no cell signal, you would not be able to communicate your position using any method. I do like the idea of your suggestions, but for me personally, if you are under duress, or have an emergency, the last thing you need to be thinking about is “which app to use”
This is a great piece of work. As stated here, w3w is in many languages. A few years ago, this was 13 languages and that was enough of a problem and when it had grown to over 40 they still boasted about it on the website as though it was a positive aspect. Now that there are over 50, the number of languages does not seem to feature as something to boast about. So which language should be used in an emergency? The language of the sender or the language of the recipient? Once you take into account the different languages and the lemmas, w3w collapses to a system using an unpredictable number of characters from about 12 to 25 to define an impractically small area. The British postcode system is one of the most accurate specialist postal coding systems in the world. It can define a single building but more often part of a street that is maybe 100m across. Sometimes, in rural areas, it defines an area 10km across that has only one or two delivery addresses in it. Like w3w, it is a proprietary system and no comprehensive hard copy mapping is available. (Worse still, it is slowly changing all the time.) Most postal coding systems around the world are far less accurate. What this means is that a useful, and possibly hugely improved, addressing code can be achieved with a far smaller number of characters than w3w without all of the problems of multiple languages and without the problems of a proprietary system. Consider a possible alternative. VG895921 is an six-figure MGRS grid reference with code letters that defines a 100m x 100m square (similar size to a British postcode). 30V VG895921 defines it uniquely (it is a point within the UK) but VG895921 does not repeat for several hundred kilometres and so is unique within most nation states around the world in which it occurs. This system covers the entire world. Adding a further two digits defines a 10m x 10m square. It is open source and appears on the civil mapping systems of some countries and the mapping of many military organisations. It is a blend of the UTM grid with sets of 100km squares imposed upon it in the same manner as a British OS Grid Reference. NOTE: 1. British OS Grid Reference is the preferred positioning system for Land SAR operations in Great Britain. 2. In over 50 countries around the world, most mobile phones automatically send your lat-long location in an AML data stream alongside your emergency call or SMS. Enable AML/ELS, stay on the line for >30s. 75% success for UK mobile 999/112. See EENA website for more information. 3. MGRS is Military Grid Reference System and is sometimes called USNG or United States National Grid in the USA. 4. UTM is Universal Transverse Mercator and is routinely used for civilian mapping in several countries.
Have you ever tried to explain the military grid positioning system to a hiker who is I’ll prepared and has no idea how to explain where they are. Maybe great for military talking to each other but Joe Public have no idea and want something simple. Easy to tell someone to download the App and text or read out their position. A 10 yo kid could do it, that’s the point.
@@McGoldbug There are apps to download for other positioning systems as well. I have apps for British OS Grid, Lat-Long, MGRS and UTM. In systems like OS Grid or MGRS, using 6 digits positions you to within 100m, which is good enough for most emergency purposes, and is unique with a 100km square. The reason MGRS uses that approach is because during WW2 allies noticed that the British were more effective because their grid reference system meant that they were more likely to know where they were and where they were going. The British had been using their earlier Cassini grid, or Modified British System. You refer to 'Joe Public' but in WW2 that is exactly who made up the 3 million men of the British Army and made such good use of the grid reference system.
Great presentation. Sorry to be so old-fashioned but I see nothing wrong with the Ordnance Survey grid reference system. Easy to use and understand if you are sensible enough to take a proper map with you when walking in the Brecon Beacons or anywhere else for that matter. It's even easier with a smart phone to tell you exactly where you are with either OS or GPS coordinates. If you're worried about your battery dying to either check your position or contact emergency services you can just go back to the tried and tested use of compass, whistle, flashlight and common sense of always checking exactly where you are as you go along before you get into trouble. I have to wonder how many outdoor enthusiasts know how to do that nowadays. Alternatively carry a separate small battery bank to be used only in emergency to keep your phone working. And remember, there's not always a phone signal when you need it, especially in remote locations. I've come across people lost because of lack of a map, compass and phone signal. We certainly seem to be living in a time of dumbing down where intelligence counts for nothing.
Any thing can be improved! Knocking the invocation off What 3 Words is poor form. Why didn’t you come up with Four Words When or whatever decades ago? Most of the problems you highlight with what3words would also affect your so-called new and improved system. And not to worry, there are very few high rise buildings in remote African villages so no issues with vertical positioning there. I love the idea of What 3 Words and yes, they should profit from it. Hecklers like you are part of the development process.
Even translating is not that simple. There are multiple translations for the same word in different languages, there are different meanings for the same words etc. You end up having a database for map positions' translations in most languages for making it bullet proof. Open source is the only one I would want this system to be, not belonging to some company who decides where is everything, all by itself. But, if you ask me, this comes too late. In a few years / a decade, maybe two, technology will make this redundant. Some device can easily send a GPS location without messing the numbers of the coordonates, spelling them might not be needed.
Yes it's not perfect, but it's far better than not having it. As for the 'offensive' word combinations, you're not supposed to take offence where none is intended.
If there were 2 or 4 redundant but still random 4-word combinations per location (just overland or just populated areas) it would make it almost certain that no one was foced to give out an address they found offensive.
@DrAndrewSteele This is a good explanation of the drawbacks of W3W, generally it works ok, but you've explained the negatives very well. I agree that larger squares or 4 words could be better. Great vid.
It seems like a bunch of sour grapes on your behalf. Did they steal the idea from you! Four words instead of three increases the likelihood of incorrect communication. Vertical address system is no harder than level numbers 1234 etc. all just trivial stuff!!
12:10 According to the screenshot, anyway.nature.instance is _not_ in FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, JAPAN, but rather NEAR BRECON, WALES... that must've been one hell of an earthquake.
Back in the real world, I found these today: life.without.parole (Australia) living.without.hope (Iran) pink.oboe.player (Russia) shirt.lifting.fairy (Canada)
Look, Andrew, I appreciate this content and really enjoyed your video! You make some great points and I just found out about this from my dash cam. I understand your "concern" with the insensitive combinations and foreign translations, but all I can say is one should just move over 3 meters and dry up his/her oversensitive tear ducts! My response to those oversensitive users would be: GROW/UP/SNOWFLAKE !!! (I censored my 3 words choice here, believe me!)
@UCiUkaGzuJcxWnFVW6VqjfaQ A method of producing a location identifier comprising: obtaining the geographical coordinates of a location; converting the geographical coordinates into single unique value n; converting the single unique value n into a unique group of a plurality of values; converting the plurality of values into an equal plurality of respective words; and providing the plurality of words as a location identifier, and a method of identifying a location comprising: obtaining a location identifier for a location, the location identifier comprising a plurality of words; converting the plurality of words into a unique group of an equal plurality of respective values; converting the unique group of a plurality of values into a single unique value n; converting the single unique value n into geographical coordinates; and outputting the geographical coordinates. Plurality here doesn't mean plural words. Unfortunately any open source version would be a infringement of this patent
@@Henrix1998 Yeah, I saw somewhere that someone speculated any n-word version would be a patent infringement, which would be a great shame if they chose to enforce it.
@@Henrix1998 Why unfortunately? The whole idea was original and clever. Why shouldn't they be supported and hopefully make a profit? They have invested a huge amount to sell the concept.
I don't see how the 4 word option will overcome the shifting tectonic plates or the vertical positioning "problems" that are mentioned. Not even the current GPS system overcomes these two issues. Also, is it perceived that the 4 words option will be translatable into other languages? Or will it again, be anglicised?
I think what free words is great. I get these limitations, but for ease and being able to copy and paste, text the words make up for some of the downfalls. Oh and please don't give them something else to moan about, they are just words that didn't get put together to offend.
This is an excellent video which tells us a lot about W3W, thank you for researching and putting it together :) I've had concerns about W3W since our company started using it to specify the location of our multiple sites throughout the UK. 1) If the W3W company goes bust (which the figures you quoted in the video demonstrate may be sooner rather than later) then the whole system will fall apart and become useless. All time put aside to allocating addresses, making or revising signs, adding to databases etc. by numerous companies throughout the world will have been wasted. 2) What happens near the poles? How can 3-meter squares evenly cover a spherical object? There must be some interesting 'effects', shall we say, as you go further North/South. I could go on but for fear of legal action I will pause for now!
"Four Words Find Where" is too long for a name. "Where Words" is both playful and shorter. Maybe it's already taken ... no idea. I don't see this being super useful for urban use, honestly. Regular old street addresses will get people and first responders to your location. Where this can be very useful, with its own set of caveats, is the vast open nothingness of rural areas. In my part of Canada (NW Ontario) we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of lakes and forests with no possible way, short of precise GPS coordinates, to relay locations. Our police, fire, and ambulance services are starting to utilize W3W to quickly locate people who may not be at a given address, or even near a roadway. The issue of cellular coverage is definitely a problem, but a lot of outdoorsy folks here also have a satellite phone or text service that works anywhere - and texting three words for precise help would be incredibly useful for air search and rescue efforts. It's far from a cure-all, but certainly is useful in a lot of situations, particularly NON-urban environments.
I’m not that bothered that there’s a few issues with W3W. It’s much better than most other location finders and I’m so glad the National Trust is now using it. Trying to find an NT car park that wasn’t part of a NT house was really difficult before W3W because the post code they used wasn’t accurate enough.
How does W3W deconflict with actual place names? For example it would be pretty weird if "White. House. Lawn." wasn't Infront of the President's mansion, or if "Sugar. Loaf. Mountain." wasn't in Rio De Janerio. I guess you could exclude words that are common to traditional place name constructions, but that must have a pretty sizeable impact on your pool of vocabulary to draw from.
Hahaha, great point! what3words.com/sugar.loaf.mountain is in Iran! And sadly ‘white’ is not a w3w word, but the Cold War evidently continues because the Russians have a what3words.com/whiter.house.lawn …
@@DrAndrewSteele sugar.loaf.mountain seems to be a fire station in Iran. However, cute as that may be, I think it makes no difference to the goal of what3words. Other than making clever RUclips videos possible, in practice, who cares?
Certainly protecting a copyright isn't grounds for being the "meanest.company.ever"? I don't see people tearing apart RUclips's algorithm (which might be worth more as a useful investment of time). Why shouldn't the company have a right over who uses their source code? I get you want to stress test it and what not, but it's not exactly public property and I assume they did the work, code and research themselves, and don't think there is any problem with them taking actions against illegal versions of a program they made
FOSS and a collaborative effort make sense. To use the “squares” in remote places as some sort of address makes no sense to me since that is not how people live. It would also be better to coordinate the grid with the existing ones expressed in latitude and longitude. Since one second of latitude and longitude is about an 80 foot square and a five meter square is a much smaller unit the final size of the smaller unit should fall into the larger one. The 3 or four word value could represent the larger unit, with a repeating sequence for each smaller subunit. This would in effect make it a four or five word thing unless the 5th were just a number or a single letter. Universal systems like these should not be patent-able. However, the persons involved with first setting it up deserve some sort of compensation.
Personally I don’t see the point in w3w, I do see it is cleverly marketed. If you can use an app you can send a pinned screenshot of goggle maps. Dyslexia can be an issue. Autocorrect could change words if texting a location. Accents can also be an issue. Just to add what was already said.
If I break a leg somewhere with no mobile signal , I will know where I am but helpers will not. The points raised in this video may be correct, but seem a little like nit picking when alternatives are rare. I have been looking at this system for some years now, but it does not seem to be catching on. Would a four word system fare any better? Do the motoring breakdown services advocate a system that would be useful to them? Some one will find fault with any positioning system, so why bother trying?
So why not start "4 words find where"? Do you necessarily need a company that is unwilling to accommodate outside contributions to change its basic locational 3 words structure?
Oh please if Michael mosely had taken his phone and what three words with him maybe he would still be with us. Google maps shows my daughters house on a railway bridge ….. what three words is brilliant in the country when you break down.
What about multi-level addressing? That issue with the HQ of the company -- does that square mean on or under the motorway? The wrong level may mean life or death in a rescue situation. What about tectonic or glacial movement? Some places can move more than a meter during an earthquake.
Your video is fun to watch and very informative. But you seem incredibly hostile to what3words. You have thoroughly nitpicked what3words and I have nitpicked your nitpicking, a little. Near the start of the video, you should specify exacty which "nerds" have been litigated against. "Nerd" is a vague term that is an evaluation. Did any of these "nerds" work for or own rival companies? Or for CNN? At 6:06 you say "literally no idea where you are" and that is not true. There would be only a few dozen possible places, and most would be in the sea, or in foreign countries. By the way, I use "literally" to indicate that I am not speaking metaphorically, and I suggest you do the same, as many consider that to use it to merely mean "absolutely" or "truly" damages the language and makes you look bad. At 6:50 you need to establish that it is likely that "employers" and "employer" really are likely to be mistaken for each other. Also, you need to show that there are many such cases. As it is, the viewer is likely to suspect that you have combed through a large area to find a single pair that some might believe are confusingly similar. At 8:12 you say certain three word permutations are inappropriate, but what is inappropriate to say in a formal situation is not inappropriate when it is known to be a permutation generated by an algorithm, arbitrarily, and with no intent at creating a meaning. Some may think you are scraping the barrel here, if you are claiming that this is something wrong with what3words. At 11:20 you make a good point. I hadn't thought of the problem of the lack of altitude or storey information in the what3words system. On the other hand, I don't think it claims to replace addresses, only to supplement them. At 12:14 the screen is displaying "anyway.nature.instance NEAR BRECON, WALES" but there's no explanation about what this means. I can't make head or tail of it. At 13:55 it's not clear how the translation system you are referring works. At 15:38 you haven't conceded that it is at least technically copyright violation to publish copyrighted material on the internet without permission. You said these people were "trying to help", but you didn't establish that. Again, this is vague and an evaluation.
I only was told about w3w yesterday and thought what a fantastic idea, on viewing this vid, yes I realise it has shortcomings but they seem to be relatively minor. The point is that it vastly improves on what's already here. In the UK the postcode and street address is all there is. Addresses can be confusing at the best of times and post codes cover a large area. Map grid references are another way but again you need the map and at best cover a much larger area. So yeh in this world of tech a universally sgreed new mapping system looks like must.
A couple of months ago, What 3 Words published full, front page advertisements in a major newspaper (probably in other newspapers as well) here in India to promote their product. An added linguistic challenge in India is the fact that we have 22 official languages and many of them have their own script. I prefer Google Plus Codes (the long version).
I think you are tending to complicate something that is very simple. The person taking the address on the Radio will be trained enough to understand these kinds of are used and they will ask very brief questions to eliminate any possibility of misunderstanding. As for the person who is lost and using what3words for global positioning, they should also focus upon the exact spelling and the asking the radio person to repeat it back to them. Why would you want to stop using a system as genius as what3words? I don't care for the old vertical and horizontal numbering will multiple digits. Math/digits is always more difficult than the spoken word by the average citizen. KISS (keep it simple stupid) is exactly the definition of what3words has created.
Wow, you sound like an ex employee with a grudge! Yes it has faults, but you have jumped out of your box to find them. The advantages definitely outweigh the disadvantages.
Re: overlooks.vertical.positions I would have thought that the three words would function similar to a postcode, which is how I just discovered it when ordering a new microwave (address + postcode + three words). Yes, it doesn't have my flat number, or my floor number, but it still seems to add a useful bit of extra information to my location (to prevent people getting lost). As someone who is very used to parcels and fast food deliveries going to the wrong block of flats, that gives the idea merit. Fair points on the rest though.
![Cody Johnson - I'm Gonna Love You (with Carrie Underwood) [Official Music Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yy9PuYMU29g/mqdefault.jpg)
Stay safe wherever you are, kids!
Some good advice for UK viewers is to register your phone to text 999 in case you find yourself with too little signal for calls or internet, but just enough to send a text. TEXT THE WORD ‘REGISTER’ TO 999. STOP WHAT YOU’RE DOING AND DO IT NOW!
If anyone’s got any suggestions for tips in other parts of the world, please leave a comment below!
And finally, anyone for whom a 17-minute RUclips video isn’t enough detail will enjoy security researcher Cybergibbons’ blog posts about the algorithmic issues with what3words: cybergibbons.com/security-2/why-what3words-is-not-suitable-for-safety-critical-applications/ (All other citations and further reading can of course be found in the video description.)
Just sent that text and got an automated reply that it was already registered. Good to know that I have that option
Thanks for the heads up on 999, and for presenting a complex topic in a very clear to understand way.
@@tonydotnottingham You’re welcome :)
Thanks..sooo much
Didn't know that. Done it now:)
Lesser combination instead of
3m -> 57 trillion squares
5m -> 21 trillion squares
with any no of word combinations 2~3 will be measurement vise more std.
To be offended by a randomly (in effect) generated permutation of words makes about as much sense as to choose to be offended by a rude shape in the clouds. Also, let's not forget that, just as beauty is in in the eye of the beholder, offensiveness is in the mind of the beholder. The "offensiveness" is not in the phrase itself. It only exists as a result of someone choosing to be offended (or since that isn't operationally defined, better to say, "claiming to be offended").
Well said, completely agree! Also the examples given in the video would not seem offensive to anyone who has a 'clean' mind...
@@stepheneyles2198 You might as well look in a table of random numbers and complain that 666 is there. Or look at a long book and complain that one of page numbers in 666.
100% agree! Offense is in the mind of the beholder. It’s random, make a joke of it so you remember it better. 99.99% of the world will not know it exists. And fewer will care.
A few technical/algorithmic points: W3W effectively translates bounded GPS coordinates into a dictionary of words. The problem is that the direct literal translation of GPS coordinates to the base-40000 corpus results in the weird combinations. Because there are 57 trillion combinations you can't just make this a simple database lookup, it requires a mathematical base conversion, that's the root of the problem. You can't just update a database to make a location less offensive or less confusing. A technical solution to this is to provide a "patch list" database of coordinates that resolve to a different word combination that is more unique or less offensive, but that patch list has to ensure there are no collisions. The W4W proposal has a couple more challenging issues. Aside from the words.in.inappropriate.order, which also requires a patch list (you will never have an algorithm that doesn't offend someone), you are changing the grid spacing over water. This requires a database of geofences to determine the difference between land and water, but more importantly it makes the algorithm non-orthogonal. You have to restart your base reference point in "water" zones because you cover 4x as much area for each address, if you simply continued the smaller grid over water then the approach is orthogonal, but you don't have enough words in the corpus to express all possible locations. A simpler approach would be to divide the globe into 4 quadrants (just like lat/lon has 4 quadrants), and prefix your location with the quadrant. Then you can have duplicate addresses but they are separated by 180 degrees, which is a simple way of de-conflicting addresses. That approach avoids geofences and orthogonality problems.
All good points, thanks! I am not a geo/mapping expert by any stretch, but when I did the calculations for 4WFW the grid size change made a big difference in terms of number of words, so it seemed potentially worth it? docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wYEkseg1vbmkOzh-ZkuPHD2zn2vB5DvdXkOM-5Mnif8 w3w is geofenced too (it uses simpler words over more densely populated regions), so it’s not a disadvantage relative to that… Though you’re right, orthogonality would be nice! (As mentioned in response to another comment, being able to use an even number of words as a coordinate system is a potential advantage.)
The way I’d make it offence-free is have few enough words that you can remove any with problematic connotations… As I said in the video, it probably wouldn’t remove all mildly hilarious ones, but I think you could do away with a lot of the issues! As @cavalrycome suggests, you could try using just nouns, which could be a good start. :)
@@DrAndrewSteele I guess the answer lies in the objective. Is the objective to provide a "lost and found" coordinate system or to provide a generalized location system? As you pointed out, any such system like W3W suffers from a lack of dimensionality. Therefore it seems that a short-code system is really only viable for lost+found type location mapping. Certainly a 5x5m grid is sufficient for lost+found, but if that's the objective, a larger area would work just as well. Make the grid 10mx10m and your calculations show an orthogonal algorithm would only need a ~1500 word corpus. If you break that up into quadrants, it reduces the amount to around 1063 words. If you allocate more words than necessary then you should have "spare" locations that don't conflict and you can replace offensive phrases with the nearest least offensive phrase. Say you allocate 1200 words and have 4 quadrants. For the purposes of search and rescue you don't even need a quadrant value, since you will be searching in a locality anyway. If this is something that interests you, create a Github repo to discuss this and have proof of concept code. Having a base-1200 corpus when only 1063 is needed is like having a sparse hash table. 1063 values will map to 1200, but you'll have some values that don't map, so those unused values become spares that can be used to replace offensive phrases. I think it might be a challenge to come up with 1200 simple nouns that translate from English into other Languages easily. Maybe the answer is to start with a non-English language and work backwards?
@@eformance Totally agree, it really does depend on the problem you’re trying to solve. 3×3 m seems not precise enough for addresses but so precise as to cause loads of problems, for example! 10×10 seems maybe a bit big for meeting someone in an urban environment? But even then, you’re not more than 7 metres or something away, and on average 3.5 or something, so maybe that’s the easiest solution…
It seems to me that the patch list could make use of reserved words that are never used in the algorithmically generated IDs and can only appear when invoked by a moderator. (With only 40,000 words in the dictionary, there must be heaps of more obscure/unusual words that could be deployed in manual patches). So "remove.dark.people" could be manually overridden with eg. "remove.dark.triceratops" (where triceratops is a rare manual-only word that cannot appear otherwise). With human oversight to manually replace these problematic IDs as and when they are reported and with manual checking that none of the 'replacement IDs' collide with each other (which ought to be much simpler matter than checking them against every possible algo ID) the problem could be fairly easily taken care of.
the algorithm seems to be a bit more complex then a some math conversion, I found out that most of the words that I have searched for fun seems to be all on land, they do map out the ocean and you can get codes for that too but it seems they made the ocean words longer and more complicated then the words on the land which is pretty interesting
I've been following W3W since its release although I have not used it extensively. The Four-Word option sounds very promising and I like the idea of eliminating plurals, etc. Very good analysis.
Like any system there will be shortcomings. As another poster stated, you are unlikely to use this as a way to identify somewhere in a high rise. In that case you would use the regular postal address but it is useful to identify which entrance of that high rise you should meet at.
The argument that the words might be confused if calling on a bad line is true, but is also equally true for trying to read a string of numbers for a GPS coordinate.
Well said. A sentence will also only offend if you allow it to.
What I learned mostly from your video is that if I am lost, I need to VERY accurately communicate my 3 word location, and verify that the emergency crew reads it back absolutely correct. In an emergency situation I could care less how offensive the words might be to me or anyone else!!
Sorry for being a knobhead but, Surely you couldn't care less.
I've used w3w since its release. I use it as a driving app with Google maps. Found it better than just Google maps all round. The issues on this video aren't going to apply to the vast majority of users. I don't plan on going to Alaska any time soon.
A couple of extra bits - smart phones that have GPS (needed for W3W to work) should already send your location automatically when calling emergency services, avoiding *any* words or mistakes. But even when not, a simple SMS of a URL can allow your location to be passed automatically with even poor signal coverage, again avoiding any words - a system some search and rescue that are not on emergency services numbers already use. Finally the T&Cs for W3W actually say to read and understand all of the T&Cs before use, and check them before each use, wasting a lot of valuable time if you actually follow the terms they have set. Oh, and they also say they cannot be used where the use could conceivably lead to loss of life, something that could apply in any emergency use situation. They also say you must not rely on their products, that is part of their terms too!
Wow, great find! (You read the T&Cs?! :) )
I can see why they want to cover themselves here, but it does seem pretty amazing that their own advertising strategy directly contradicts their own terms of use… And check them before each use is hilarious…whatRead4000wordsThenSay3words doesn’t quite have the same ring to it…
I quite agree! The first time I heard about w3w I thought, as my son would say -'wait, what?!, you have to use your GPS smart phone to run and app to get 3 words communicate your location?'
Of course they’re going to use standard language to cover them selves legally. Everyone does.
Yes, the app uses the limited accuracy of your phone’s GPS to determine the closest set of words assigned by W3W. Three words which are easier to convey and comprehend than the standard Lat-Long coordinates.
Great video Andrew and as a geospatial professional for 4 decades I understand and agree with everything you said relating to those topics you discussed, very well-articulated BTW! So, I'm a stickler about correct datums, coordinate systems, positional accuracy and I'm happy communicating in coordinates and decimal places, however; I also love W3W for exactly what it is actually great for, which you also pointed out, finding a discreet location that doesn't have a street address and passing it on to someone else so they can also identify that same square on the same or alternate mapping app - yes it has some idiosyncrasies, but man it has some great uses and people should give it go to see where it can be useful for their own situations.
My 3 words to those who comment but haven't actually used it: "try.it.first". W3W does use, but doesn't require, GPS to get your location; the first of two differences to other addressing systems is the overlaid base-grid that happens to provide the second difference, an alternative to an 'address' where there isn't one. If you happen to know where you roughly are, want to be, or looking for, just open the W3W app and move the basemap or photomap with your...well...digit. It's perfect for providing a location to someone for them to navigate to, e.g. I've sent one to my son showing the exact carpark space (yes outdoor) where I left his car for him to collect - I didn't care what the 3 words were, didn't have to, neither did he. Whether you're at the beach, in the park or trying to relay or find the location of a shack in a shanty town, or the entrance gate to a property, especially very large ones, W3W is perfect for that - just not everything - find your own uses for it, "be.pleasantly.surprised".
In Australia, we have a great emergency services app, Emergency Plus, which provides your location in multiple forms as soon as you open it, including street address, Lat/Long, your location on a basemap, and you guessed it, W3W. Plenty of accurate information for the emergency services responder - if they get it wrong from there, it's their fault.
Another problem with having a private company in charge of a system like this is competition. The concept is simple enough to copy and using the patent to prevent copycats will only go so far. It won't be enforceable in some parts of the world and it doesn't last forever. Much like bitcoin, if there's profit to be made then there will be copycats and spinoffs. And then you need to know which system the rescue service you have called is using and download the right app to match.
A free and open, globally agreed system has no profit, and therefore no incentive to spin your own version off.
Good point too! Closed-source solutions cause so many problems…
"globally-agreed" is the tricky bit. There are already many open-source attempts at reducing the complexity of geographic coordinates, but none of them has emerged as the clear winner.
Good god. We can't even get a 'globally agreed system' to agree on having the same emergency number... such as 999 or 911. Some even use different numbers to call fire vs police vs. medical. Bottom line... if you don't like W3W.... don't use it or recommend it. Same goes for the other choices that people insist on complaining about, such as the evil Google, the evil Amazon, the evil Facebook (Meta).
If you don't like it.... don't use it... and sell your stock in the company.
I think I've just found the next tom scott, brilliant video!!!!
First time viewer, and man, I gotta say this is so incredibly well written, filmed and edited. Kudos to you! Am subscribing!
Thank you!
Having worked on the 999 emergency line some ten years ago we were then able to get the Northings and Eastings for mobile phones instantly. This would back then allow us to locate a phone within approximately 25 metres. If it was critical and indoors we could then get the subscriber details from the provider or pinpoint the phone to within a few feet.
Bizarrely, the one time I called 999 in the last few years the operator didn’t even know which TOWN I was in! I told them which street I was on and they were like ‘slow down, XXX street, which town?’ I thought the auto-location thing had been deployed universally but apparently not!
Glad to hear it works at least somewhere though, and great to hear from someone who’s actually dealt with 999 calls :)
@@DrAndrewSteele cheers for the response. That is odd. As I stated it is ten years since I worked there so things might have changed. However, as I can not see technology becoming less effective I have to suspect that you connected with someone who did not know their job. That’s not ideal when the 999 service is literally contacting them is more often than not a life or death situation.
@@deanwal1962 Thankfully that one wasn’t life or death! But yeah, it would be odd if things had gone backwards. Here’s hoping the tech and training for new operators has solved this by now. :)
You need the permission of the caller for this to work. Once mountain rescue phone you they ask permission.
No we didn’t. However, it may be different for Mountain Rescue. Back when I worked for BT we (999 Operators) only routed calls to the Fire, Police, Ambulance and very occasionally to the Coastguard. If I recall correctly calls requiring Mountain Rescue went through to the Police. Once through to the I am almost certain that we were required to pass on the Northings and Eastings.
Just got an ad on RUclips India about this.. wanted to know more about it. Thanks for putting out practical challenges 😄
Glad to be of service!
Obviously, you don't know that MRT's use OS National Grid References in the UK, not Lat Lon, that's for adding your confusion in!..... W3W does have its benefits if the user is on a roaming call some info is better than none as MRT's can't call them back. Also if you have the wrong location autosuggest that W3W supply is a great benefit. I have criticised W3W before, now I have a better understanding. It's a tool in the toolbox to benefit emergency services
You can now add the longitude and latitude cords under the three words in the new update. It can help in an emergency.
I wasn't aware there is a law against criticism.
may be it is US only…
Isn't the first amendment free speech?@@SD_Alias
Id say use 4 words, but keep the 3x3m for the land, and make 9x9 for the ocean. However, make them 3x3x3m upto a certain hight where it makes no sense, like the top of everest (but keep the ocean 2D cus it's the ocean) Or we could adjust how many height words are given depending on the geography (and buildings) of the area.
It might be a headache to implement, but it would help convey far more information about your location. Like if youre stuck on a bridge or in a tree.
The only issue is: if you add a third dimension at 3 m resolution, you’re going to need LOADS more words!!
...and can't say, I'm up a tree? I think the bridge would be self-explanatory...same with the mountainside.
If the exact three word square your on has confusing words, just tap near ones that are easier to read out!!! Youll still get found!! Jeeze!
You can also find similarly 'offensive' terms in a dictionary, this is why we have context and nuance.
People don’t live or worship in dictionaries
Very high quality video, loved the cheeky digs with the 3 word locations
Thanks!
I think what3words has limitations but it is excellent for places without an address. If you were to call emergency services for a problem of floor 10 of a building most people would have no trouble using the address i.e. floor 10 London House High Street Blanktown. Indeed if the address is known you would not need what3words. But in places you do not know where you are or do not have an address it would work fine and certainly a lot better than co-ordinates. It would seem unlikely people in rural Russia would use English words whether offensive or not. Stuck on a mountain would you care if the 3 words might make an offensive phrase? No.
It is massively worse than co-ordinates for emergency services. If you can use W3W, you can use any number of SAR designed location systems - which are not only more accurate (8 decimal place UTM is standard) - they are heirarchal (an incorrect UTM location will still point us in the right direction - whilst a W3W location will send us the complete wrong way) and most importantly - they tell us how accurate the co-ordinates are - say you have poor tracking due to a low quality GPS antenna in your device, or limited overhead sattelites, or obstructed path to sattelites, your GPS coordinates can often show areas several kilometres in size - a W3W location will just pick the centre of that HUGE area and say you're there - a proper location system will tell us how big the margin of error is.
W3W is a stillborn concept - and it being advertised in the public safety role is an example of venture capital placing start up dollars above human life.
I wouldn't care if it made an offensive phrase. Period.
My problem is that it explicitly excludes geographical relationships (I know that I am on a trail but don't know how far I progressed. I may have passed through all sorts of w3w addresses, no way I can tell only 2 of those that stayed constant during my hike). I also may not know my precise location (due to being in a gorge in southern France for example where GPS precision drops significantly) I would want to be able to give a less precise address without the implication that I know where I am within those 3 meters... Due to reflections off the gorges walls I may be several 100 meters off in any direction. With GPS I can use the number of digits I pass on to the rescuers to imply a precision, instead of giving 6 digits after the decimal point I can give 4 digits, thereby widening the search area but the rescuers will know that lack of precision and come prepared...
Both very good points! Representing uncertainty is particularly hard in a words-based system…maybe you could somehow cleverly encode it into the words but that might make it even worse at geographical relationships! Hmm.
Computational linguist here. It could be good to limit the words to just nouns so that you can't accidentally make sentences that mean potentially offensive things. I also wonder if it would be possible to make use of some characteristics of the words that are not being used in the system you describe, like which letter they begin with to indicate things like height or to indicate the larger geographic area the square belongs to. For instance, having person.man.woman.television and papa.meat.witch.tan both belong to an larger area designated p.m.w.t (from the first letters of each word). This would allow rescue workers to at least narrow things down if the words weren't heard correctly for example. Just thinking out loud.
Great idea! And great example hahaha
It’s also potentially part of another good argument for four-word addresses which I cut for space reasons: having an even number of words allows you to use them as x/y coordinates, so p.m could be a large latitude-ish square and w.t a large longitude-ish one.
@@DrAndrewSteele Yes, that would be even better!
2 letters gives you a division about half a degree when applied naively. Would there be an advantage to a structured ordering that repeats around the globe so a.b.c.d is for example a ~5x5km area inside a larger ~3000x3000km area? So locally just the letters tell you a general place that is not globally unique but is still decently specific if you are free to make an assumption about where the call came from. Then the full 4 words would still be globally unique and specify a more exact location. Knowing places near you all start with similar letters may help filter some really absurd but similar sounding word locations, but if all the words near me start with b.c or b.d for a degree of distance that might make hearing things even harder.
You could still get "offensive" phrases with only nouns. But why worry about it? You might as well worry about rude shapes in the clouds.
If you can talk to the person can't you just send a text with the words?
Another problem I see with it are the square system itself. My house has one address, it has also 1 specific address code (Eircode in Ireland) but it has 27 w3w combinations. Imagine an emergency situation at a mall or so. Emergency services would get multiple contacts but with different combinations and they would have to translate them and then collate to know that they already dispatched a response to it.
Your 4 easier words list sounds better but the final list should be going through accent screening, especially involving foreigners that aren't native speakers.
Good point! Even quite small properties have multiple addresses. See also the w3w HQ address…
I overcame that by selecting the w3w code for my front door grid. My house is a stand-alone residence, there are three w3w codes from the footpath kerb on the street to my front door, so saving the grid in which my front door is located gives emergency services, postal, delivery, etc an exact location.
Well said Ray, Greg - you say your property is covered by 27 squares but you're happy with just the one address for your property, so imagine when the emergency crew arrive at your address, they then have to find their way in and find you somewhere on that property. At your disposal now, you have 27 pin point areas you could tell them exactly where to find you by. You could pin point exactly which gate to enter etc (should that be necessary for them to know). As for the point about multiple calls from different locations in a mall - I think people are forgetting that you don't just ring the emergency centre and say 'Fire at town.chair.lift' for example and then put the phone down leaving them wondering if this call could be related to the last one they had, they talk to you and confirm where the location is, they will not think there are fires all over the place as you are suggesting.
I used it to save some nice photo locations or tell my buddy where i am with my fishing gear and tell him so easily my location which has no address. It worked fine. I understand the problems that can occur, but so far they have never affected me or occurred. The 3 words with a literal description of the location are then even safer. So for my needs it is working good… The 4 words option and bigger squares sounds good for me and should be considered. Who needs 3meter accuracy? even 20meter would be exact enough.
Did what3words not have a UX team that tested and reiterated upon findings such as yours? And more importantly why have they not hired you??
I broke down on the motorway. Calls insurance, could barely hear them for the sound of trucks. They insisted I download this P.O.S app. My GPS / 5g etc is always on by default. All I got was a blank white screen showing a dot & no way of telling me where I was. No button to locate me. I've avoided this app by my own intuition up to this point & it looks like I was right. After uninstalling it, they then proceeded to spam me to death for a few weeks. Bogus behaviour. Dodgy data collecting company.
Download a simple grid reference app instead.
Wow, what a terrible experience. Add those issues to the list!
Yes you are obviously a very clever young man, and you made some valid points, however if I was ever in a situation that I needed help but hadn’t a clue where I actually was, (happens more and more these days), I don’t think that I would be troubled by some “politically incorrect” “what3words”! I appreciate that the exact what3words need to transmitted.
So until someone comes up with a better solution, my vote goes to what3words.
I totally agree with you 5m on land and 10m on sea, extra words add to it or even numbers. You pointed out the things could be improve for better purpose. Can't argue with corporate wants to make $$, the world is going mad.
some as important as this should have some sort of international standard (like ISO) and not left to commercial companies as the gatekeepers.
Totally agree!
I am using W3W to tell people the location of trees. Readings on my phone tell me the GPS inaccuracy. This can be 10s of meters. If the tree is in a street I use the initial reading to go to the web site and use the street view to more accurately pinpoint the centre of the tree. If the tree is in a wood I can't pick out a particular tree from the large green area so the W3W is less useful, but it is still useful. Obviously any system will be limited by GPS accuaracy.
Excellent suggestions. I would actually use it if they changed to four words and larger squares.
Also, what gets me is people manage to read 16 digit credit card numbers when ordering a curry and that works, so actually reading a numeric location with a bit of spacing and a check digit is not that hard, honest.
Being offended by words in a neutral situation like this is just ridiculous in my opinion.
Sorry I offended you, addresses like dark.monkey.people are just ridiculous in my opinion.
I am a surveyor to trade and think this is a great video
Thanks!
If you are at home you can find more than one addreess depending on where you are in the room, if one address offends you , move a little to the left or right and find a different address. I feel this is very picky. I guess it has to be given its question of what is wrong. I am sure that if I phoned for help I would want to be sure that my position was known by spelling the words as well. I think it will be a while before WTW is used as the sole means of giving an address. It is a bit like going into the mountains relying on sat nav without a map and compass to fall back on. WTW is a potentially extra safety tool.
amazing videographic production and engineering content!
Thank you!
The larger the list of words, the more precise the address can be, coupled by how many words you use. Sure, you can simplify the amount of words used by making the squares bigger, but then the mapping system won’t be as precise. It depends on what you plan to use it for, even geocoordinates can be bigger areas if you use less digits.
I was having trouble wrapping my head around the benefit of W3W. It seemed the only difference between sharing your location with W3W vs sharing your location with traditional maps is if you are trying to describe your location over the phone, something I would never do. Whether your location is being shared via an app, or from something like the emergency feature in an Apple Watch, the receiving party simply gets a clickable link. When an emergency situation is happening, I prefer to use an app called “Parachute” because in an emergency their is a lot more useful details it will gather for you then just your location. If you were in a location with no cell signal, you would not be able to communicate your position using any method. I do like the idea of your suggestions, but for me personally, if you are under duress, or have an emergency, the last thing you need to be thinking about is “which app to use”
This is a great piece of work.
As stated here, w3w is in many languages. A few years ago, this was 13 languages and that was enough of a problem and when it had grown to over 40 they still boasted about it on the website as though it was a positive aspect. Now that there are over 50, the number of languages does not seem to feature as something to boast about. So which language should be used in an emergency? The language of the sender or the language of the recipient?
Once you take into account the different languages and the lemmas, w3w collapses to a system using an unpredictable number of characters from about 12 to 25 to define an impractically small area.
The British postcode system is one of the most accurate specialist postal coding systems in the world. It can define a single building but more often part of a street that is maybe 100m across. Sometimes, in rural areas, it defines an area 10km across that has only one or two delivery addresses in it. Like w3w, it is a proprietary system and no comprehensive hard copy mapping is available. (Worse still, it is slowly changing all the time.) Most postal coding systems around the world are far less accurate. What this means is that a useful, and possibly hugely improved, addressing code can be achieved with a far smaller number of characters than w3w without all of the problems of multiple languages and without the problems of a proprietary system.
Consider a possible alternative. VG895921 is an six-figure MGRS grid reference with code letters that defines a 100m x 100m square (similar size to a British postcode). 30V VG895921 defines it uniquely (it is a point within the UK) but VG895921 does not repeat for several hundred kilometres and so is unique within most nation states around the world in which it occurs. This system covers the entire world. Adding a further two digits defines a 10m x 10m square. It is open source and appears on the civil mapping systems of some countries and the mapping of many military organisations. It is a blend of the UTM grid with sets of 100km squares imposed upon it in the same manner as a British OS Grid Reference.
NOTE:
1. British OS Grid Reference is the preferred positioning system for Land SAR operations in Great Britain.
2. In over 50 countries around the world, most mobile phones automatically send your lat-long location in an AML data stream alongside your emergency call or SMS. Enable AML/ELS, stay on the line for >30s. 75% success for UK mobile 999/112. See EENA website for more information.
3. MGRS is Military Grid Reference System and is sometimes called USNG or United States National Grid in the USA.
4. UTM is Universal Transverse Mercator and is routinely used for civilian mapping in several countries.
Have you ever tried to explain the military grid positioning system to a hiker who is I’ll prepared and has no idea how to explain where they are. Maybe great for military talking to each other but Joe Public have no idea and want something simple. Easy to tell someone to download the App and text or read out their position. A 10 yo kid could do it, that’s the point.
@@McGoldbug There are apps to download for other positioning systems as well. I have apps for British OS Grid, Lat-Long, MGRS and UTM. In systems like OS Grid or MGRS, using 6 digits positions you to within 100m, which is good enough for most emergency purposes, and is unique with a 100km square.
The reason MGRS uses that approach is because during WW2 allies noticed that the British were more effective because their grid reference system meant that they were more likely to know where they were and where they were going. The British had been using their earlier Cassini grid, or Modified British System. You refer to 'Joe Public' but in WW2 that is exactly who made up the 3 million men of the British Army and made such good use of the grid reference system.
So all it need is a text message and not a phone call.
Hope you never make any mistakes or get autocorrected while texting!
Great presentation.
Sorry to be so old-fashioned but I see nothing wrong with the Ordnance Survey grid reference system. Easy to use and understand if you are sensible enough to take a proper map with you when walking in the Brecon Beacons or anywhere else for that matter.
It's even easier with a smart phone to tell you exactly where you are with either OS or GPS coordinates. If you're worried about your battery dying to either check your position or contact emergency services you can just go back to the tried and tested use of compass, whistle, flashlight and common sense of always checking exactly where you are as you go along before you get into trouble. I have to wonder how many outdoor enthusiasts know how to do that nowadays. Alternatively carry a separate small battery bank to be used only in emergency to keep your phone working. And remember, there's not always a phone signal when you need it, especially in remote locations. I've come across people lost because of lack of a map, compass and phone signal.
We certainly seem to be living in a time of dumbing down where intelligence counts for nothing.
Exactly right!
Spot on. The hype around W3W as some great new thing is strange given the OS have been doing it for years and even have a free app( OS locate)!
Ur so underrated I thought I was watching a RUclipsr with a million subs
Haha thank you!
Love your 4-word idea. When do you complete your business plan? I want shares!!
Any thing can be improved! Knocking the invocation off What 3 Words is poor form. Why didn’t you come up with Four Words When or whatever decades ago? Most of the problems you highlight with what3words would also affect your so-called new and improved system. And not to worry, there are very few high rise buildings in remote African villages so no issues with vertical positioning there. I love the idea of What 3 Words and yes, they should profit from it. Hecklers like you are part of the development process.
Even translating is not that simple. There are multiple translations for the same word in different languages, there are different meanings for the same words etc. You end up having a database for map positions' translations in most languages for making it bullet proof. Open source is the only one I would want this system to be, not belonging to some company who decides where is everything, all by itself.
But, if you ask me, this comes too late. In a few years / a decade, maybe two, technology will make this redundant. Some device can easily send a GPS location without messing the numbers of the coordonates, spelling them might not be needed.
Yes it's not perfect, but it's far better than not having it.
As for the 'offensive' word combinations, you're not supposed to take offence where none is intended.
If there were 2 or 4 redundant but still random 4-word combinations per location (just overland or just populated areas) it would make it almost certain that no one was foced to give out an address they found offensive.
Those who can, do. Those who cannot, criticize the work of those who can.
This comment broke my irony meter
Very good analysis... 4wordsfindwhere!!!
@DrAndrewSteele This is a good explanation of the drawbacks of W3W, generally it works ok, but you've explained the negatives very well. I agree that larger squares or 4 words could be better. Great vid.
Thank you! :)
Platetectonics means that your neat system breaks down, when land.moves.ocean, as the distinction of land and water literally moves.
He's Tom Scott for What3words
It seems like a bunch of sour grapes on your behalf. Did they steal the idea from you! Four words instead of three increases the likelihood of incorrect communication. Vertical address system is no harder than level numbers 1234 etc. all just trivial stuff!!
12:10 According to the screenshot, anyway.nature.instance is _not_ in FUKUSHIMA PREFECTURE, JAPAN, but rather NEAR BRECON, WALES... that must've been one hell of an earthquake.
Oops
Back in the real world, I found these today:
life.without.parole (Australia)
living.without.hope (Iran)
pink.oboe.player (Russia)
shirt.lifting.fairy (Canada)
@@litterpicker1431 Haha those are great/terrible!
Big fan of w3w for many years. You opened my eyes.
Look, Andrew, I appreciate this content and really enjoyed your video! You make some great points and I just found out about this from my dash cam. I understand your "concern" with the insensitive combinations and foreign translations, but all I can say is one should just move over 3 meters and dry up his/her oversensitive tear ducts! My response to those oversensitive users would be: GROW/UP/SNOWFLAKE !!! (I censored my 3 words choice here, believe me!)
Their reluctance to remove plurals can be explained by the fact their patent specifically states that it's done using plurals.
Hahaha really?! Brilliant
@UCiUkaGzuJcxWnFVW6VqjfaQ
A method of producing a location identifier comprising: obtaining the geographical coordinates of a location; converting the geographical coordinates into single unique value n; converting the single unique value n into a unique group of a plurality of values; converting the plurality of values into an equal plurality of respective words; and providing the plurality of words as a location identifier, and a method of identifying a location comprising: obtaining a location identifier for a location, the location identifier comprising a plurality of words; converting the plurality of words into a unique group of an equal plurality of respective values; converting the unique group of a plurality of values into a single unique value n; converting the single unique value n into geographical coordinates; and outputting the geographical coordinates.
Plurality here doesn't mean plural words. Unfortunately any open source version would be a infringement of this patent
@@Henrix1998 Yeah, I saw somewhere that someone speculated any n-word version would be a patent infringement, which would be a great shame if they chose to enforce it.
@@Henrix1998 Why unfortunately? The whole idea was original and clever. Why shouldn't they be supported and hopefully make a profit? They have invested a huge amount to sell the concept.
I don't see how the 4 word option will overcome the shifting tectonic plates or the vertical positioning "problems" that are mentioned. Not even the current GPS system overcomes these two issues.
Also, is it perceived that the 4 words option will be translatable into other languages? Or will it again, be anglicised?
Some people can’t feel important unless they complain .
This comment broke my irony meter
I think what free words is great. I get these limitations, but for ease and being able to copy and paste, text the words make up for some of the downfalls.
Oh and please don't give them something else to moan about, they are just words that didn't get put together to offend.
I did not know about this. Thank you for a great video!
Why would you be passing the words verbally when the App automatically sends them !
This is an excellent video which tells us a lot about W3W, thank you for researching and putting it together :)
I've had concerns about W3W since our company started using it to specify the location of our multiple sites throughout the UK.
1) If the W3W company goes bust (which the figures you quoted in the video demonstrate may be sooner rather than later) then the whole system will fall apart and become useless. All time put aside to allocating addresses, making or revising signs, adding to databases etc. by numerous companies throughout the world will have been wasted.
2) What happens near the poles? How can 3-meter squares evenly cover a spherical object? There must be some interesting 'effects', shall we say, as you go further North/South.
I could go on but for fear of legal action I will pause for now!
"Four Words Find Where" is too long for a name. "Where Words" is both playful and shorter. Maybe it's already taken ... no idea.
I don't see this being super useful for urban use, honestly. Regular old street addresses will get people and first responders to your location. Where this can be very useful, with its own set of caveats, is the vast open nothingness of rural areas. In my part of Canada (NW Ontario) we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of kilometers of lakes and forests with no possible way, short of precise GPS coordinates, to relay locations. Our police, fire, and ambulance services are starting to utilize W3W to quickly locate people who may not be at a given address, or even near a roadway. The issue of cellular coverage is definitely a problem, but a lot of outdoorsy folks here also have a satellite phone or text service that works anywhere - and texting three words for precise help would be incredibly useful for air search and rescue efforts.
It's far from a cure-all, but certainly is useful in a lot of situations, particularly NON-urban environments.
I’m not that bothered that there’s a few issues with W3W. It’s much better than most other location finders and I’m so glad the National Trust is now using it. Trying to find an NT car park that wasn’t part of a NT house was really difficult before W3W because the post code they used wasn’t accurate enough.
How does W3W deconflict with actual place names? For example it would be pretty weird if "White. House. Lawn." wasn't Infront of the President's mansion, or if "Sugar. Loaf. Mountain." wasn't in Rio De Janerio.
I guess you could exclude words that are common to traditional place name constructions, but that must have a pretty sizeable impact on your pool of vocabulary to draw from.
Hahaha, great point! what3words.com/sugar.loaf.mountain is in Iran! And sadly ‘white’ is not a w3w word, but the Cold War evidently continues because the Russians have a what3words.com/whiter.house.lawn …
@@DrAndrewSteele There is a Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine, USA
@@DrAndrewSteele sugar.loaf.mountain seems to be a fire station in Iran.
However, cute as that may be, I think it makes no difference to the goal of what3words. Other than making clever RUclips videos possible, in practice, who cares?
There is a Sugar Loaf Mountain near Starvation Peak near Las Vegas, New Mexico USA
It always has around 60 miles of inaccuracy for my phone.
Certainly protecting a copyright isn't grounds for being the "meanest.company.ever"? I don't see people tearing apart RUclips's algorithm (which might be worth more as a useful investment of time). Why shouldn't the company have a right over who uses their source code? I get you want to stress test it and what not, but it's not exactly public property and I assume they did the work, code and research themselves, and don't think there is any problem with them taking actions against illegal versions of a program they made
6:28 how much time and effort to find this pair of nearby combinations?
Not much, my computer did it for me :)
You perfectly and thoroughly explained what I felt just as a subconscious distrust. Well done video!
FOSS and a collaborative effort make sense. To use the “squares” in remote places as some sort of address makes no sense to me since that is not how people live. It would also be better to coordinate the grid with the existing ones expressed in latitude and longitude. Since one second of latitude and longitude is about an 80 foot square and a five meter square is a much smaller unit the final size of the smaller unit should fall into the larger one. The 3 or four word value could represent the larger unit, with a repeating sequence for each smaller subunit. This would in effect make it a four or five word thing unless the 5th were just a number or a single letter. Universal systems like these should not be patent-able. However, the persons involved with first setting it up deserve some sort of compensation.
Just read it the words using the phonetic alphabet,
I think you are over complicating a very useful app.
Personally I don’t see the point in w3w, I do see it is cleverly marketed. If you can use an app you can send a pinned screenshot of goggle maps. Dyslexia can be an issue. Autocorrect could change words if texting a location. Accents can also be an issue. Just to add what was already said.
Thank you Thank you thank you. I utterly detest wow. There is absolutely nothing wrong with learning to navigate properly
Today I learned about what3words, and its flaws! Great video
This was super useful! I was able to turn your video into a ESL mini plan! thank you! 🙏
Lovely to hear that it can be put to some educational use! :)
If I were a government in a poor country, I would simply make my own system instead of buying one.
Excellent video. Thanks Andrew.
Thanks Graham!
I love What Three Words. It’s absolutely fantastic! Not had any problems yet.
If I break a leg somewhere with no mobile signal , I will know where I am but helpers will not. The points raised in this video may be correct, but seem a little like nit picking when alternatives are rare. I have been looking at this system for some years now, but it does not seem to be catching on. Would a four word system fare any better? Do the motoring breakdown services advocate a system that would be useful to them? Some one will find fault with any positioning system, so why bother trying?
All the emergency services have it installed now, so it's definitely caught on.
All Major car/truck manufacturers are starting to imbed W3W in their tracking.
If you’re in the Uk , the ordnance survey has had this stuff sorted for decades
So why not start "4 words find where"? Do you necessarily need a company that is unwilling to accommodate outside contributions to change its basic locational 3 words structure?
Oh please if Michael mosely had taken his phone and what three words with him maybe he would still be with us. Google maps shows my daughters house on a railway bridge ….. what three words is brilliant in the country when you break down.
Hats off to him He Calculated All the probability standing on a mountain and there's a apple tree ........😅
What about multi-level addressing? That issue with the HQ of the company -- does that square mean on or under the motorway? The wrong level may mean life or death in a rescue situation.
What about tectonic or glacial movement? Some places can move more than a meter during an earthquake.
Your video is fun to watch and very informative. But you seem incredibly hostile to what3words.
You have thoroughly nitpicked what3words and I have nitpicked your nitpicking, a little.
Near the start of the video, you should specify exacty which "nerds" have been litigated against. "Nerd" is a vague term that is an evaluation. Did any of these "nerds" work for or own rival companies? Or for CNN?
At 6:06 you say "literally no idea where you are" and that is not true. There would be only a few dozen possible places, and most would be in the sea, or in foreign countries. By the way, I use "literally" to indicate that I am not speaking metaphorically, and I suggest you do the same, as many consider that to use it to merely mean "absolutely" or "truly" damages the language and makes you look bad.
At 6:50 you need to establish that it is likely that "employers" and "employer" really are likely to be mistaken for each other. Also, you need to show that there are many such cases. As it is, the viewer is likely to suspect that you have combed through a large area to find a single pair that some might believe are confusingly similar.
At 8:12 you say certain three word permutations are inappropriate, but what is inappropriate to say in a formal situation is not inappropriate when it is known to be a permutation generated by an algorithm, arbitrarily, and with no intent at creating a meaning. Some may think you are scraping the barrel here, if you are claiming that this is something wrong with what3words.
At 11:20 you make a good point. I hadn't thought of the problem of the lack of altitude or storey information in the what3words system. On the other hand, I don't think it claims to replace addresses, only to supplement them.
At 12:14 the screen is displaying "anyway.nature.instance NEAR BRECON, WALES" but there's no explanation about what this means. I can't make head or tail of it.
At 13:55 it's not clear how the translation system you are referring works.
At 15:38 you haven't conceded that it is at least technically copyright violation to publish copyrighted material on the internet without permission. You said these people were "trying to help", but you didn't establish that. Again, this is vague and an evaluation.
Superb analysis.
Thanks!
I only was told about w3w yesterday and thought what a fantastic idea, on viewing this vid, yes I realise it has shortcomings but they seem to be relatively minor. The point is that it vastly improves on what's already here. In the UK the postcode and street address is all there is. Addresses can be confusing at the best of times and post codes cover a large area. Map grid references are another way but again you need the map and at best cover a much larger area. So yeh in this world of tech a universally sgreed new mapping system looks like must.
Wondering what (famed linguist) Noam Chomsky might think of w3w approach
He might think it’s transformational.
A couple of months ago, What 3 Words published full, front page advertisements in a major newspaper (probably in other newspapers as well) here in India to promote their product.
An added linguistic challenge in India is the fact that we have 22 official languages and many of them have their own script. I prefer Google Plus Codes (the long version).
Always with the people in the rich world trying to impose simple solutions on complex situations…
I think you are tending to complicate something that is very simple. The person taking the address on the Radio will be trained enough to understand these kinds of are used and they will ask very brief questions to eliminate any possibility of misunderstanding. As for the person who is lost and using what3words for global positioning, they should also focus upon the exact spelling and the asking the radio person to repeat it back to them. Why would you want to stop using a system as genius as what3words? I don't care for the old vertical and horizontal numbering will multiple digits. Math/digits is always more difficult than the spoken word by the average citizen. KISS (keep it simple stupid) is exactly the definition of what3words has created.
I guess Mountain Rescue are also tending to complicate something very simple when they recommend against w3w? www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-57156797
This is a brilliant video, really interesting and entertaining
Many thanks!
Imagine complaining about randomly generated word combinations.
No need to imagine, I made a whole video about it! (see above) Hope you enjoy it!
Great video! Thanks!
Wow, you sound like an ex employee with a grudge! Yes it has faults, but you have jumped out of your box to find them. The advantages definitely outweigh the disadvantages.
Can't understand why what3words is still going,, reinvented the wheel if you ask me.
Surely you just text the three words, which eliminate any of the confusion …
I hope your phone has flawless autocorrect and you’re not freezing on a mountainside wearing gloves!
@@DrAndrewSteele I’ll be at a music festival. My hands might be similarly shaky but for different reasons. 😝
@@BM-qn6fg Hahaha, have fun
Re: overlooks.vertical.positions
I would have thought that the three words would function similar to a postcode, which is how I just discovered it when ordering a new microwave (address + postcode + three words).
Yes, it doesn't have my flat number, or my floor number, but it still seems to add a useful bit of extra information to my location (to prevent people getting lost).
As someone who is very used to parcels and fast food deliveries going to the wrong block of flats, that gives the idea merit.
Fair points on the rest though.