What 3 Words

[duncanp]

There are times when it's useful.

My mother in law was a nurse in the community in a mostly rural area, they would write (well Type) onto the notes the three words so other staff could find the right house on the right but if country lane without having to drive for a mile at 15mph as it's somewhere here and it's not easy to turn around if we sail past it (some lanes it's not easy to reverse up either).

Could it be better, certainly. However I would say that there are cases where it does work well. Like all things it's a tool and like all tools it's not foolproof.

Given that most emergency calls on the UK are from phones and people stay on the line, it shouldn't be too hard to recheck words of they flag up as clearly wrong.

Whilst it would be better if everyone knew how to read a map sometimes you've not got that clear an idea of exactly where you are and so a rough grid reference followed up with a W3W reference would give you a rough guide even if the W3W was wrong. However if it's right it would save a lot of searching, which if it's foggy or other low visibility situation can be very time consuming.

I think if people knew the phonetic alphabet, it might be easier to use What Three Words over the phone.

Delta, Oscar, Whiskey, November, Charlie, Alpha, Sierra, Tango dot Foxtrot, Romeo, Alpha, Golf, Mike, Echo, November, Tango, Sierra dot Charlie, Romeo, Oscar, Uniform, Tango, Oscar, November, Sierra

is the summit of a hill I am planning to walk up on Saturday, if the weather holds.

It should be possible to print off a card with the phonetic alphabet on it, if you can't remember by heart.

Where What 3 Words is useful is if you are able to communicate the reference by text or e-mail.

 

[Typhoon]

In reality it's a bloody awful system. You mishear or misspell one word and you could be on the other side of the world.

And, they use thousands of words....

Having spent too much of yesterday trying to get Royal Mail's Tracking system to find where my missing letter is, I heartily concur. 'Bee' ... ' - Do you mean 'Vee ...', maybe 'Pee ...'. I wouldn't mind but they got the second 'Bee' right each time!

And, as you say, they use thousands of words and that doesn't mean that the recipient won't hear a word they don't use.

Compared to Ordinance Survey:
"My Grid reference is November-Sierra, One-two-three, Four-five-six."

Numbers - much better, they all sound different. The Royal Mail system even picked up that on one occasion I said 'owe' when I meant zero; easy to do when there are only 10 options.

 

[pdq]

I used w3w for real this week. I had a puncture on a country lane in North Pembs which needed recovery. Virtually no phone signal and no data connection. Got through to Skoda Assist who asked for my location: I could have said I was on the road from Cardigan to Moylgrove but that was as much as I knew. So I asked if w3w was OK to use - gave the reference, and he confirmed our location. I'm sure we'd have worked it out another way, but this was so easy.

 

[najaB]

There are times when it's useful.

Nobody denies that.

It's their insistence that they've invented a better, rounder wheel that grates on my nerves.

 

[Roast Veg]

Nobody denies that.

It's their insistence that they've invented a better, rounder wheel that grates on my nerves.

It's their intense desire to charge large organisations for a service that ought to be offline and free that gets on my nerves. They are trying to commercialise grid references, which I should be able to have a paper copy of!

 

[najaB]

They are trying to commercialise grid references, which I should be able to have a paper copy of!

Not to mention that their system is proprietary - so there is nothing stopping them from doubling (tripling, quadrupling, etc.) the rates once they are sufficiently engrained.

 

[ainsworth74]

Not to mention that their system is proprietary - so there is nothing stopping them from doubling (tripling, quadrupling, etc.) the rates once they are sufficiently engrained.

That's standard tech unicorn behaviour though isn't it? See Uber's game. They ain't going to stay cheaper than the competition if/when they've driven the other cab firms in an area out of business...

 

[etr221]

The big flaw in the proposition that what three words can be used to communicate locations is the presumption that the three words can be easily, accurately and reliably relayed and re-entered.
Unlike serial numbers (account, telephone,... whatever) - which we 'know' have to transmitted accurately - words (as words. because of the way we use them) don't (normally) require the same accuracy: we can cope (generally) with mis-spellings and the like. W3W is not so forgiving or capable.

(And the phonetic alphabet having been raised - reading up why in the international (ICAO/NATO) version the first (a,alfa) and tenth (j,juliett) letters are the way they are (and other letters are those that they are) will illuminate what can be required when it really, really matters)

 

[ainsworth74]

(And the phonetic alphabet having been raised - reading up why in the international (ICAO/NATO) version the first (a,alfa) and tenth (j,juliett) letters are the way they are (and other letters are those that they are) will illuminate what can be required when it really, really matters)

Interesting!

In the official version of the alphabet, the non-English spellings Alfa and Juliett are used. Alfa is spelled with an f because the English and French spelling alpha would not be pronounced properly by native speakers of some other languages (in particular Spanish) who may not know that ph should be pronounced as f. Juliett is spelled with a tt for French speakers, because they may otherwise treat a single final t as silent. Some published versions incorrectly list "alpha" and "juliet" – presumably because of the use of spell checker software – but those spellings are never correct and should be changed back to "alfa" and "juliett" wherever such mistakes are found.

The scientists who developed the phonetic alphabet did extensive tests with real people who spoke many different languages and with various kinds and intensities of radio interference, carefully choosing words that are unlikely to be confused with each other and which are pronounced the same no matter who says them.

User:Guy Macon/Alfa or Alpha? Juliett or Juliet? - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[duncanp]

One major flaw with What 3 Words is if you have to communicate with someone whose first language is not English.

The way French speaking people pronounce the letter G sounds rather like the way English speaking people pronounce the letter J.

Imagine if it was Quelles Trois Mots and you had to communicate an address such as arbre.cuillère.horloge, to an Italian speaker in an emergency.

 

[etr221]

One major flaw with What 3 Words is if you have to communicate with someone whose first language is not English.

The way French speaking people pronounce the letter G sounds rather like the way English speaking people pronounce the letter J.

Imagine if it was Quelles Trois Mots and you had to communicate an address such as arbre.cuillère.horloge, to an Italian speaker in an emergency.

Quite.

And w3w is available with 47 (or more) other languages - each with its own word list, and incompatable sets of words for locations - so they can easily use their familiar words - and while they have happly said gwarantwn.rhaghysbysebion.rhodlais - or ከአስተዳደር.ሽያጭ.ተነሳስቶ , you are left wonderering "what? how do I spell it? how do I enter it?" - and even if you sort that out, will your version of w3w handle it?

And, BTW, going back to my previous post, the weakness of the quoted wikipedia entry is that it doesn't explain that juliett has no final e (which it would have in French) to stop others pronouncing that e (and being misunderstood)

 

[Doctor Fegg]

That's standard tech unicorn behaviour though isn't it? See Uber's game. They ain't going to stay cheaper than the competition if/when they've driven the other cab firms in an area out of business...

Indeed, and what3words is a particular kind of VC-backed tech company - the one whose endgame is "get acquired". Their investors will be looking for w3w to get acquired by Amazon, Google, Facebook or some other titan... at which point, expect w3w's operations to be rapidly reoriented to the acquirer's interests.

 

[Ediswan]

Lat/Lon can be troublesome when language differences come into play as you need to communicate North/South/East/West/+/-. Then there is never being quite sure if the format will be D.dddd, D M.mmm, or D M S.

I quite like UTM. This is little know in the UK because we have the OS grid. In other countries, UTM is on printed on maps as a 'GPS' grid. All you need for UTM is the international phonetic alphabet.

 

[etr221]

Lat/Lon can be troublesome when language differences come into play as you need to communicate North/South/East/West/+/-. Then there is never being quite sure if the format will be D.dddd, D M.mmm, or D M S.

The other problem with lat and long is that datums differ - maybe not by much, but enough that you'll have the wrong place

I quite like UTM. This is little know in the UK because we have the OS grid. In other countries, UTM is on printed on maps as a 'GPS' grid. All you need for UTM is the international phonetic alphabet.

UTM (Universal Transverse Mercator) suffers - or benefits - from being a global system: in its 'pure' form it suffers from being purely numeric, hence involding vary large co-ordinates. The military used version (MGRS - Military Grid Reference System) adds letters for 100km squares (like the OS GB National Grid) to keep the numbers under control, and make it more user friendly - it is now advocated in the USA as USNG (United States National Grid), principally within the emergency response community as I understand.

While UTM/MGRS was adopted by NATO, etc. from the early 1950s, eventually to cover most of the world, the UK & Ireland were excluded, being left on the OS GB National Grid and Irish Grids (which work on the same basis, as grid systems. While OS GB NG is not based on the WGS84 datum (model of the world), the OS have produced a transformation to enable WGS Lat/Long to be converted to National Grid: I think the Irish have the same. So within Great Britain (and Ireland) there is no practical benefit in changing (and avoids the issue of having UTM zone boundaries in inconvenient places).

 

[Ediswan]

The other problem with lat and long is that datums differ - maybe not by much, but enough that you'll have the wrong place

Agreed. Some years ago on a cycling trip to France one of our party had a GPS moving map with freshly released IGN (French) topographical map data. Position was never as close as with the UK map data. Then we spotted it was a consistent offset, datum ? The supplier was contacted to ask about the datum used. The response was basically "b****r".

Once we understood the moving map had an offset, it was easy enough to use.

 

[bubieyehyeh]

google's open standard pluscode seems better suited and easier to relay. google map and openstreet map mobile apps both can generate them.

 

[Roast Veg]

While UTM/MGRS was adopted by NATO, etc. from the early 1950s, eventually to cover most of the world, the UK & Ireland were excluded, being left on the OS GB National Grid and Irish Grids (which work on the same basis, as grid systems. While OS GB NG is not based on the WGS84 datum (model of the world), the OS have produced a transformation to enable WGS Lat/Long to be converted to National Grid: I think the Irish have the same. So within Great Britain (and Ireland) there is no practical benefit in changing (and avoids the issue of having UTM zone boundaries in inconvenient places).

Converting WGS84 to OSGB36 is very easy to get wrong, as Ediswan's story attests. It's one of those algorthms you don't program yourself, you use somebody else's. I speak from employed experience...

google's open standard pluscode seems better suited and easier to relay. google map and openstreet map mobile apps both can generate them.

Agreed.

 

[Ediswan]

google's open standard pluscode seems better suited and easier to relay. google map and openstreet map mobile apps both can generate them.

I had missed that system. Far too simple .

Converting WGS84 to OSGB36 is very easy to get wrong, as Ediswan's story attests. It's one of those algorthms you don't program yourself, you use somebody else's. I speak from employed experience...

The map supplier's mistake was using OSGB36 with IGN mapping. They should have used the same datum as IGN. The best I can find for that is "Clark 1880 ellipsoid, IGN modified". The replacement set of maps (the following year) were spot on.

As for the conversion maths, I would also leave that to the specialists.

 

[etr221]

google's open standard pluscode seems better suited and easier to relay. google map and openstreet map mobile apps both can generate them.

Agreed - of the various systems I've seen for converting Lat/Long (from a GPS device) to something more friendly, it seems by far the best.
Let down perhaps by a tendency to quote Local plus codes with a locality, rather than full, global, plus codes (perhaps with high order part in parenthises); and a lack of 'push' by Google/whoever.

 

[Roast Veg]

Agreed - of the various systems I've seen for converting Lat/Long (from a GPS device) to something more friendly, it seems by far the best.
Let down perhaps by a tendency to quote Local plus codes with a locality, rather than full, global, plus codes (perhaps with high order part in parenthises); and a lack of 'push' by Google/whoever.

I do wish they'd push it even with a short advertising campaign.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

It is interesting to me that there are (rightly) objections to W3W being actively promoted by public bodies, as they are a private business using proprietary technology... meanwhile in the bus and rail industries, a large chunk of the customer service aspects of operators (complaints, disruption updates etc.) is done using Twitter... yet nobody bats an eyelid about that.

 

[najaB]

It is interesting to me that there are (rightly) objections to W3W being actively promoted by public bodies, as they are a private business using proprietary technology... meanwhile in the bus and rail industries, a large chunk of the customer service aspects of operators (complaints, disruption updates etc.) is done using Twitter... yet nobody bats an eyelid about that.

Because there's no lock-in with Twitter. It's just a platform and, if Twitter either goes out of business or decides to go full evil, operators can simply stop using it and use a different common platform.

It's convenient, but bus/rail companies still have phone lines, email, and web sites (even postal addresses!) for people who don't want to use Twitter.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Because there's no lock-in with Twitter. It's just a platform and, if Twitter either goes out of business or decides to go full evil, operators can simply stop using it and use a different common platform.

It's convenient, but bus/rail companies still have phone lines, email, and web sites for people who don't want to use Twitter.

There is that... however, have you tried using the "alternatives"? Often you ring up and nobody answers, or websites haven't been updated with the latest information, particularly with smaller operators. So effectively it is the same situation from the user's point-of-view: having to use a third-party app to get up-to-date information from a business you've contracted to provide a service.

 

[najaB]

There is that... however, have you tried using the "alternatives"?

Yes. I've contacted TOCs using their web forms and by email and got replies.

 

[61653 HTAFC]

Yes. I've contacted TOCs using their web forms and by email and got replies.

Better luck than me then. I suppose at least Twitter is usually public, so if there's a serious grievance they'll likely address it quickly before it escalates into a PR own-goal!

Anyway, I've taken us far enough off-topic so I'll leave it there.

 

[Roast Veg]

Because there's no lock-in with Twitter. It's just a platform and, if Twitter either goes out of business or decides to go full evil, operators can simply stop using it and use a different common platform.

It's convenient, but bus/rail companies still have phone lines, email, and web sites (even postal addresses!) for people who don't want to use Twitter.

I don't use twitter, and don't feel like I'm being coerced to anywhere on the railway. Other lines of communication have always been adequate.

 

[ComUtoR]

There is that... however, have you tried using the "alternatives"? Often you ring up and nobody answers, or websites haven't been updated with the latest information, particularly with smaller operators. So effectively it is the same situation from the user's point-of-view: having to use a third-party app to get up-to-date information from a business you've contracted to provide a service.

I would say that the TOCs are using Twitter because their passengers are. The demand has come from the customer base. With What 3 Words it its the other way around. They are pushing demand from a supplier perspective.