January 31, 2018 at 15:55You went to three funny words! New geocoding and what3words.com
In 2013, two IT people and a musician got together and thought: let's divide the whole Earth into squares, and then mark each square with three words. And smashed. And marked.
The result was a free service what3words.com , which swung at the revolution in geocoding. The guys assure that the mailing addresses and coordinates are not suitable for everyday life. It's time to give them up where possible.
| Mailing address | GPS coordinates | What3words Address |
|---|---|---|
| Russia, Moscow, Turchaninov lane, etc. 6 page 2 | 55.737208, 37.597091 | Name day.Animal.Tunnel |
How it works
What3words.com broke the surface of the Earth into squares of 3 × 3 meters, resulting in 57 trillion sites. The algorithm assigned a unique three-word code to each of them:
- " Badger.poka.ryabin " - Moscow Kremlin;
- “ Class . Brown . Council ” - Hermitage;
- “ Tasty . Home . Frosty ” - a statue of Liberty.
Through what3words.com it is easy to share Success
Short and popular words the algorithm assigns to densely populated squares. And 3 m² in the Siberian taiga get a code like “ utopian . Confusion . Plasma ”.
Addresses that sound similar intentionally positioned as far apart as possible. Allegedly, it is more difficult to make mistakes when typing.
What3words already supports 15 languages, new ones appear every few months. For each language, a dictionary of 25,000–40,000 words is collected. All dictionaries together weigh 10 MB.
For different languages, the words in the address are different, we are not talking about machine translation. " Badger.poka.ryabin " in English will turn into " radio.forget.skis". Also, the service basically does not use words that look the same in different languages.
Address of the square on the map know map.what3words.com or an application for iOS and All Android . The creators especially emphasize that the application does not need a network. There is an API for developers.
All of this is free.
Why did they plant a garden
The creators do not trifle: "addressing systems around 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 poorly formalized. In Russia alone, the devil’s leg will break, we wrote an article about it “ Seven programmers have an address without a home ”.
For example, in Elektrostal there are addresses “pr Lenina, 1” and “pr Lenina, 01”. And yes, these are different houses.
At the international level, the fun is added:
- Different countries have different address formats. For example, Ireland has its own Eircode index system , and in Hong Kong there are no indexes at all;
- the addresses are always tied to the language: it is good when it is English, but it can be Thai, Arabic or Georgian.
Let's not forget that most of the Earth’s surface has no mailing address at all.
GPS coordinates are a tool for cars, not people. “60.648834, 47.443597” cannot be remembered even if a beloved is waiting at this point. It’s inconvenient to dictate them, and to record them for a long time.
An address of three words is more advantageous. " Eat . Order . Feather " is easier than "123022, Moscow, sh. Zvenigorodskoye, d. 20 p. 2 "or" 55.764622, 37.552849 ". Three words are easier to call a taxi driver. It’s easy to drive them into notes on your phone or write them down even on your wrist.
Domino's Pizza promotes three-word addresses somewhere in the Caribbean. It’s easier because there’s a mess with the addresses
Who is already using what3words.com
Surprisingly, seemingly frivolous service solves important tasks.
What3words is built into the UN UN-ASIGN mobile app . The drivers and security forces of the organization pass their location through it. Three-word addresses mark photos from disaster areas.
Land Rover and Mercedes-Benz are also in the subject. The first built the service into their ARDHI application: it is something like a social network for fans of off-road. The latter generally added What3words to their car’s navigation system.
Copter Express has integrated What3words into drone software. The manufacturer of delivery drones believes that it is impossible to remember GPS coordinates, not every location has an address.
What3words works well in poor regions like Africa. Navigation is sad there, so the mails of Nigeria, Djibouti and Cod d'Ivoire use three-word addresses along with the usual ones.
A full list of partners is on the site , everyone uses What3words more or less the same. The service is actually used by large companies, it is developing and is constantly expanding its reach.
What do critics say?
Naturally, a global venture attracts haters.
Critics note that two-dimensional coordinates will not replace the mailing address. The creators of What3words did not provide for nesting, so goodbye to floors, apartment or office numbers. Combined addresses like " gordyy.yadra.zhuchok , square 23" absolutely ridiculous.
It seems strange that the algorithm pulls similar addresses to different ends of the Earth.
The creators call this arrangement of similar addresses insurance against typing errors. But the solution destroys the logic of the address system
The fighters of the open source front were especially mocked. 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 it, they’ll turn on tougher monetization or they’ll cover it all. They have a right.
Regular addresses will not go anywhere
It seems that the creators of what3words.com 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 mail addresses and find GPS coordinates for them. They are unlikely to lose relevance in our lifetime.
Come to us to work if you want to do cool things with addresses and other contact details. Right now 7 vacancies are open for strong javists, testers, support engineers, implementers .