You went to three fun words! New geocoding and what3words.com
In 2013, two IT professionals and a musician got together and thought: let's break the whole Earth into squares, and then mark each square with three words. And broke. And tagged.
It turned out a free service what3words.com , which threatened the revolution in geocoding. The guys claim that postal addresses and coordinates are not suitable for everyday life. It is time to abandon them where possible.
| Mailing address | GPS coordinates | What3words address |
|---|---|---|
| Russia, Moscow, Turchaninov lane, d 6 page 2 | 55.737208, 37.597091 | Named.Ptichiy.Tunnel |
How it works
What3words.com broke the Earth's surface into squares of 3 × 3 meters, it turned out 57 trillion plots. Each of them was assigned an algorithm with a unique code of three words:
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- “ Badger.poka.ryabina ” - Moscow Kremlin;
- " Class . Brown Council " - Hermitage;
- " Vkusnaya.roddom.morozny " - the statue of Liberty.
What3words.com makes it easy to share success
Short and popular words algorithm assigns densely populated squares. A 3m² in the Siberian taiga receive a code like " utopian.Putanitsa.plasma ".
Addresses that sound like they are intentionally located as far from each other as possible. Allegedly, it is more difficult to make a mistake when typing.
What3words supports 15 languages, new ones appear every few months. A dictionary of 25,000–40,000 words is compiled for each language. All dictionaries together weigh 10 MB.
For different languages, the words in the address are different, we are not talking about machine translation. “ Badger.pok.ryabina ” in English will turn into “ radio.forget.skis ”. Also, the service basically does not use words that look the same in different languages.
The address of the required square is found on the map map.what3words.com or in an application for iOS and Android . The creators especially emphasize that the application does not need a network. For developers, there is an API.
All this for free.
Why town or garden
The creators are not small things: "addressing systems all over the world do not meet the requirements of modern life." No more, no less. And this statement makes sense.
Mailing addresses - the system is old, and therefore complex and weakly formalized. In Russia alone, the devil will break his leg, we wrote an article about this “ Seven programmers have an address without a home ”.
For example, in Elektrostal there are addresses "Lenin Ave, 1" and "Lenin Ave, 01". And yes, these are different houses.
At the international level, fun is added:
- different countries have different address formats. For example, Ireland has its own Eircode index system , while in Hong Kong there are no indices at all;
- addresses are always tied to the language: it’s good when it’s English, but it can be Thai, Arabic, and Georgian.
Let's not forget that most of the surface of the Earth has no postal address at all.
GPS coordinates are a tool for cars, not people. “60.648834, 47.443597” cannot be remembered, even if the beloved is waiting at this point. It is inconvenient to dictate them, but to write them down for a long time.
Three-word address is better. “ Eating . Order .” Is easier than “123022, Moscow, w. Zvenigorodskoe, d. 20 p. 2 ”or“ 55.764622, 37.552849 ”. Three words are easier to call a taxi driver. They are easy to drive into the notes on the phone or write at least on the wrist.
Domino's Pizza promotes three-word addresses somewhere in the Caribbean. It's easier, because there’s a mess
Who is already using what3words.com
Surprisingly, seemingly frivolous service solves important problems.
What3words is built into the UN-ASIGN mobile app. Drivers and security forces of an organization pass their location through it. Three-word addresses mark photos from disaster zones.
Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz also in the subject. The first built service in their application ARDHI: it is something like a social network for offroad fans. The second even added What3words to the navigation system of their cars.
Copter Express integrated What3words into drones software. The manufacturer of delivery drones thinks that it’s impossible to memorize GPS coordinates, the address is not at every location.
What3words comes well in poor regions like Africa. It’s sad to navigate there, so Nigeria, Djibouti and Cod d'Ivoire use three-word addresses along with regular ones.
A complete list of partners is on the site , everyone uses What3words more or less equally. The service is actually used by large companies, it develops and is constantly expanding coverage.
What do critics say
Naturally, the global idea attracts haters.
Critics note that two-dimensional coordinates will not replace the mailing address. The creators of What3words did not consider nesting, so forgive floors, apartment or office numbers. Combined addresses like “ proud.djad.zhuchok , kv 23” are absolutely ridiculous.
It seems strange that the algorithm takes apart similar addresses along different edges of the Earth.
The creators call this arrangement of similar addresses insurance against typing errors. But the decision destroys the logic of the address system
The fighters of the open-source front were especially frightened. What3words - the brainchild of private business, driven by copyright. The owners have already played with monetization: they sold single-word addresses for an annual fee. Then they stopped. If they want to, they will turn on more rigid monetization or in general they will cover everything. They have a right.
Normal addresses will not go anywhere
Looks like the creators of what3words.com have made a useful service. He is already changing people's lives for the better, so we wish our colleagues success.
We will continue on an industrial scale to clean postal addresses and find for them the GPS coordinates. They are unlikely to lose relevance in our age.
Come to us to work if you want to do cool things with addresses and other contact information. Right now there are 7 vacancies open for strong javistes, testers, support engineers, implementers .
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/347972/
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