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Lincolnshire Police. What3words


Clodi

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1 hour ago, 1st ade said:

BT*, in conjunction with one mobile CSP, one handset manufacturer and UK National Government developed and tested the idea. After a few tweaks it was gradually rolled out to other networks, other handsets and other manufacturer's. The standard is open and has been made available to other countries (the code is in all handsets, not just those sold in the UK)

 

Postcodes are surprisingly useless in this scenario - not because you can't find them but because many people don't know instinctively the post code of where they are now. A common use case was a mourner having a heart attack at a funeral - those present had just driven from all over the country to .... Crematorium and knew the name but not the address or post code.

 

BT have no power to force individual police or ambulance services to accept the location. And I'm not going to die in a ditch (possibly literally) by saying to the call handler "no, I'm not going to install W3W". But if a relative of mine was in the "I'm under a tree and don't know where I am" scenario I'd be asking serious questions around why that police / ambulance service didn't use the information that BT make available when forwarding the call.

 

AML is not perfect and doesn't cover the "I had no signal when we found the casualty but I do now" scenario. But it doesn't need the caller to be conscious, to speak English or even to speak. Rapists have been caught because the victim managed to dial 999 and keep screaming. Robbers have been caught as someone managed to dial 999 and the call handler heard gunshots.

 

[ * - All 999 / 112 calls in the UK go to BT Call Handlers. They then forward to Police / Fire / Ambulance / Coastguard as required. BT also forward a rough position based on location of the subscriber (landline) or the cell site (mobile). This sorts out (for example) if you want Thames Valley Police or Bedford Police. AML adds a much greater degree of accuracy a few seconds later ]

As I understand it tested it and found it lacking, as the last red 4 words prove.

And where is your evidence for the purple quote? I can find none.

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2 hours ago, Richard10002 said:

Thanks for that.... 10 minutes of my life I won’t get back, reading a pile of conspiracy theory bollox, in order to find one line. Why not just point us to the Wikipedia link?

 

You can hope all you like but, if it “isn’t” the international standard, that’s not much use to someone needing help today.

 

Plus codes look fine, although you can be sure that Google will be looking to monetise them? No reason why they couldn’t be added to the list of ways in which the emergency services identify location.

 

”Can you get your plus code location?”

”Can you get your What Three Words location?”

 

Struggling to see why the resistance to W3W. It’s free, just like Google, Facebook, lots of email services, and so on. If it’s charged for in an unacceptable way, people won’t use it.

Ha, with that attitude I'm actually pleased you feel aggrieved about losing time.

 

I didn't see any conspiracist theory's in there tbh. Seemed like a good brief about each of the methods and how they rationalised the problem until plus codes were created.

 

Don't want to get into a petty argument, so I'll just say that if you wanted a single line explanation you could have googled, it would have been quicker than posting on here. Secondly I don't have the wiki link, I just used the link provided by stuartC.

 

The concern as stated is, that it's not public domain, so likelihood is investors will be waiting thier time before they start charging. In addition, getting a words mixed up, for example will give a location nowhere near where you are. You basically have to memorise all of it exactly else you wont get anywhere near where you are. Where as other methods mean the accuracy of the location increased the more characters you remember

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27 minutes ago, Graham Davis said:

And what is to stop Google charging later on?

It's being made open source...

 

Yes clearly better. W3W should hopefully die off soon and something else (like Plus Codes) should be made and International Standard

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36 minutes ago, sirweste said:

To be honest I've never tried Plus Codes and don't  think it's relevant at this point. What's important is not adopting a terrible closed business model as a nation. It will cost a fortune to change to the IS once it's implemented.

Sorry but if it is going to help speed up rescue as advised by the rescue services I will be using it.   They will have their own experts who will have assessed to pros & cons.

 

I am not going to not use it on the whim of a few folk on an internet forum, I take notice of the experts in their field.

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3 hours ago, sirweste said:

Checked what? The link? I hadn't as it worked last time, but checked it now and it is indeed working (for me).

Checked the article? Yes read it last time, was a good geeking out session.

ahh, so you wanted to lead us on a treasure hunt around a webpage quoted by someone else that only has a passing reference to plus codes that you may find if you seek it as if it's the wholly gravel ............... as I said, you must fancy your chances with Lady G's style of confusion.    :banghead:

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This that's the crux of it, the experts in the address, mapping world don't prefer it. It's a system set-up by a company to make money and they are keeping it that way.

 

Of course, while the emergency services (ES) are promoting it it makes sense to have the app for situations where you don't have data.

If you have data access it is completely illogical to be referred to a W3W webpage by the ES, when they could just use a webpage to ping the geo location to them; without two human interactions.

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1 hour ago, sirweste said:

It's being made open source...

 

Yes clearly better. W3W should hopefully die off soon and something else (like Plus Codes) should be made and International Standard

And Open Source can easily be changed.

And if Plus Codes is so much better why have several of us had problems getting accurate codes?
And see my earlier questions about it, which no-one has answered.

 

59 minutes ago, Jerra said:

Sorry but if it is going to help speed up rescue as advised by the rescue services I will be using it.   They will have their own experts who will have assessed to pros & cons.

 

I am not going to not use it on the whim of a few folk on an internet forum, I take notice of the experts in their field.

And in many areas those experts are saying "Use W3W", so I will continue to do so.

Edited by Graham Davis
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41 minutes ago, sirweste said:

This that's the crux of it, the experts in the address, mapping world don't prefer it. It's a system set-up by a company to make money and they are keeping it that way.

 

Of course, while the emergency services (ES) are promoting it it makes sense to have the app for situations where you don't have data.

If you have data access it is completely illogical to be referred to a W3W webpage by the ES, when they could just use a webpage to ping the geo location to them; without two human interactions.

You have provided NO evidence that "the experts in the address, mapping world don't prefer it". 
And you last sentence shows EXACTLY why PlusCodes is NOT acceptable!

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41 minutes ago, Murflynn said:

ahh, so you wanted to lead us on a treasure hunt around a webpage quoted by someone else that only has a passing reference to plus codes that you may find if you seek it as if it's the wholly gravel ............... as I said, you must fancy your chances with Lady G's style of confusion.    :banghead:

What on earth are you on about!?

Someone asked what Plus Codes were, I'm not google but as I had supplied a webpage that fully describes what Plus Codes are with more than 10 paragraphs of text about them! If you Ctrl+F on that webpage you immediately get taken to the text about them! The person that asked "what are plus codes" here, rather than in google, complained that there was too much text, you are complaining that there isn't enough!!!!

 

Google is available, I was merely trying to re-share an interesting analysis of the various address mapping principles available!

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3 minutes ago, Graham Davis said:

You have provided NO evidence that "the experts in the address, mapping world don't prefer it". 
And you last sentence shows EXACTLY why PlusCodes is NOT acceptable!

https://www.grcdi.nl/Address_encoding_versus_traditional_addressing–the_state_of_play_20181030.pdf

 

9 minutes ago, Graham Davis said:

And Open Source can easily be changed.

What? Once an algorithm has been made public code, how could it then be made non-public....?

 

10 minutes ago, Graham Davis said:

And in my areas those experts are saying "Use W3W", so I will continue to do so.

 As I said before, agreed. Should do what they are working with. Though as stated before it's utterly illogical in most situations, as most have data so they could easily use geo location on a webpage which would prevent any human cock ups with W3W, Lat Long or other codes 

6 minutes ago, rusty69 said:

Well, I will stick to having as many options on my device as possible, be that W3W, OLC or Lat and Long and offline maps.

This.

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14 minutes ago, sirweste said:

https://www.grcdi.nl/Address_encoding_versus_traditional_addressing–the_state_of_play_20181030.pdf

 

What? Once an algorithm has been made public code, how could it then be made non-public....?

 

 As I said before, agreed. Should do what they are working with. Though as stated before it's utterly illogical in most situations, as most have data so they could easily use geo location on a webpage which would prevent any human cock ups with W3W, Lat Long or other codes 

 

So 1 expert!!

All you need to do is stop any updates to the original code! 

And I notice you have studiously ignored my final point again! 
You stated:

If you have data access it is completely illogical to be referred to a W3W webpage by the ES, when they could just use a webpage to ping the geo location to them; without two human interactions.

There are too many areas that have NO data access.
There are too many people who do NOT have Smart Phones.
There are too many places that have NO mobile phone access.
There are too many areas where triangulation is NOT possible.


  Edited by Graham Davis
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2 hours ago, Jerra said:

Sorry but if it is going to help speed up rescue as advised by the rescue services I will be using it.   They will have their own experts who will have assessed to pros & cons.

 

I am not going to not use it on the whim of a few folk on an internet forum, I take notice of the experts in their field.

But at the moment 'experts' are not of a single mind. Do you just choose the one that agrees with your prior opinion? What if there are 3 on one side and 4 on the other?

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Why do you keep 'shouting'!? Chill.

If you want more info on location services and addressing then I suggest googling. I had no opinion one way or the other until I did my own reading on the subject.

I'm not telling you or anyone else what to do, I'm simply expressing that the W3W service is a bit limited and there's better ones out there. I feel like you've taken personal offence to me criticising a for profit business,which I assume you have no connection! 

 

Missing something isn't the same as ignoring.

As stated, as per your quote from me, "If you have data access..." [my bold for emphasis]

It's the if that's key in my statement. 

49 minutes ago, Graham Davis said:

There are too many people who do NOT have Smart Phones.
There are too many places that have NO mobile phone access.
There are too many areas where triangulation is NOT possible.

Agreed, if you haven't got a smart phone, but do have access to the internet then you could indeed use W3W, or any other service.

Agreed, if you haven't got a phone signal, but do have access to the internet then you could indeed use W3W, or any other service.

So....if you dont have triangulation (assume you're referring to satellite) then how does W3W work...? Am I missing something? 

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G583+MF Wadebridge

///uplifting.desktop.tarred

 

Perhaps because I already had Google Maps set to open at my home address it was significantly quicker to get the Plus Code (in both cases I had to remind myself how to do it).

 

The previous discussion does seem to assume that everyone is connected to a GPS source. The above were done simply by knowing where on a map I am, using my desktop/laptop.

 

Now find out where I am!

Edited by Mike Todd
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Regarding the emergency services sending a link and the location being sent back to them. A system achieving this is successfully in use by UK Mountain Rescue (and other UK emergency responders) and has been rolled out globally to emergency responders.
SARLoc was originally developed by a Team Member of the Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation and records verified hits and uses multiple times a week in the UK alone.
The only time What3Words would make work easier would be if no data connection existed and only voice or text messaging could be used. But in this instance the app would already have to be pre-installed on the user device. Even then, the only benefit would be the ability to phonetically spell words more easily than numbers via a bad line or the ability of W3W to ensure that misspelled words in a text are still pointing to a relevant location.

All in all – as you say W3W are producing a great example of faking Openness and trying to sell people a solution to a problem that by and large does not exist in most developed western nations.

 

The adoption of a system that only works for 20% of the earth's population (English speaking) is very illogical in my opinion, especially when the system is a monetised business model and will undoubtedly be rolled out to more and more users needing to pay in the future

 

 

Edited by sirweste
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25 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

But at the moment 'experts' are not of a single mind. Do you just choose the one that agrees with your prior opinion? What if there are 3 on one side and 4 on the other?

I choose the ones in the area I am in.   They want me to use W3W so I will had they said we only want lat & long then I would have used that.  I certainly wouldn't override what they said in favour of the opinions of a few folk on an internet forum.

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10 minutes ago, Mike Todd said:

G583+MF Wadebridge

///uplifting.desktop.tarred

 

Perhaps because I already had Google Maps set to open at my home address it was significantly quicker to get the Plus Code (in both cases I had to remind myself how to do it).

 

The previous discussion does seem to assume that everyone is connected to a GPS source. The above were done simply by knowing where on a map I am, using my desktop/laptop.

 

Now find out where I am!

yes, the Plus Code is displayed on my google maps app on my phone with no fuss. 

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4 minutes ago, sirweste said:


The only time What3Words would make work easier would be if no data connection existed and only voice or text messaging could be used.

I would have thought Ogwen was similar to the Lakes (mobile phones were decades away when I used to visit there often)  very poor reception in many/most places.  In our case often not even text until you have moved a few miles.   I have to be a couple of miles out of the village before I get reception of any kind.

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1 minute ago, sirweste said:

yes, the Plus Code is displayed on my google maps app on my phone with no fuss. 

I've now done something silly that I cannot see what: I cannot now drop another pin, long press only gives me the lat/lon data at the bottom of the screen . . . 

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7 minutes ago, sirweste said:

 

All in all – as you say W3W are producing a great example of faking Openness and trying to sell people a solution to a problem that by and large does not exist in most developed western nations.

 

 

 

 

so if I've broken my ankle while walking on the fells I don't need W3W.   I'll just give them my postcode shall I?

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1 minute ago, Mike Todd said:

I've now done something silly that I cannot see what: I cannot now drop another pin, long press only gives me the lat/lon data at the bottom of the screen . . . 

Luckily though it's open source so you can get your location from multiple apps...where as W3Ws is one app that you hope keeps working.

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