What Three Words - For the dinosaurs here :)

[Richard10002]

This is worth a watch....... there is much more to What Three Words than we may have thought.

 

 

 

[magnetman]

I can see the Amazon delivery van coming along the towpath.

 

It is pretty clever but so many places are off grid with no road access it seems awkward to implement fully.

 

 

[Hudds Lad]

Autocorrect could cause mayhem with it

[Alway Swilby]

To be grammatically pedantic it should be which three words.

[Athy]

3 minutes ago, Alway Swilby said:

To be grammatically pedantic it should be which three words.

Sho' nuff. I'd rather the squares were three yards or ten feet in diameter, too.

 

In my limited exposure to the Which Three Words system, it appears that the choice of words is entirely random. So I could be sitting here at Boing Jelly Iron or Pudding Chair Sometime. Is there any logic in the choice of each name?

 

Also, let's say I phone for a take-away delivery or an ambulance and tell them I'm at Breeze Molar sausage. How do they find that location? 

[Hudds Lad]

7 minutes ago, Athy said:

Also, let's say I phone for a take-away delivery or an ambulance and tell them I'm at Breeze Molar sausage. How do they find that location? 

They enter it into the app and it directs them.

 

But lets say autocorrect decides it knows best and changes your Breeze Molar Sausage to, let's say, Breeze Motor Sausage. Who knows where that maybe...

[IanD]

5 minutes ago, Hudds Lad said:

They enter it into the app and it directs them.

 

But lets say autocorrect decides it knows best and changes your Breeze Molar Sausage to, let's say, Breeze Motor Sausage. Who knows where that maybe...

China, probably... 😉

 

Just checked -- neither breeze.molar.sausage nor breeze.motor.sausage are places in w3w.

 

But breeze.motor.passage is in Tamil Nadu, breeze.motor.massage is near Washington DC, so that one letter difference could cause some delivery driver consternation... 😉

 

(and breeze.molar.passage is in New South Wales where breeze.molar.massage is in British Columbia, same problem...)

 

IIRC the words are chosen so that errors like this give a location so far away that it's obviously wrong.

Edited April 25, 2023 by IanD

[Alway Swilby]

7 minutes ago, Athy said:

Sho' nuff. I'd rather the squares were three yards or ten feet in diameter, too.

 

In my limited exposure to the Which Three Words system, it appears that the choice of words is entirely random. So I could be sitting here at Boing Jelly Iron or Pudding Chair Sometime. Is there any logic in the choice of each name?

 

Also, let's say I phone for a take-away delivery or an ambulance and tell them I'm at Breeze Molar sausage. How do they find that location? 

They type ///breeze.molar.sausage into their app and it shows them where you are.  As it happens breeze molar sausage is not allocated to any square in the world

 

On another pedantic note a square doesn't have a diameter. 😀

[magnetman]

I did use W3W for an ambulance call for myself a couple of yars ago when I had a serious back problem. They found me but I had managed to get to the nearest road. 

The location at the time was divorcing bulldozer treatment. 

 

Sometimes these things are reasonably amusing. 

 

If addresses were all based on three words would it get like car numberplates where you can sell yours to someone else if they think it is relevant to them?

Fun.Boating.Always might be popular. 

Edited April 25, 2023 by magnetman

[Alan de Enfield]

2 minutes ago, Athy said:

Sho' nuff. I'd rather the squares were three yards or ten feet in diameter, too.

 

In my limited exposure to the Which Three Words system, it appears that the choice of words is entirely random. So I could be sitting here at Boing Jelly Iron or Pudding Chair Sometime. Is there any logic in the choice of each name?

 

Also, let's say I phone for a take-away delivery or an ambulance and tell them I'm at Breeze Molar sausage. How do they find that location? 

 

The big problem with this system is 'language' not only regional accents that means the telephone opereator in Kent has no idea what the Glaswegian who has fallen off a cliff at Ramsgate is saying.

The other issue is actual pronunciation and how 'non-English speakers' say certain letters / words - for example for Scandinavians, Dutch and Germans (and others) the word 'Joker' would be pronounced "Yoker" (Js are Y's)

 

Do the 'words' translate for every different country, or are the words different in every language ?

I can imagine I'd have problems if I needed to use W3W in Africa, China etc if they were in the local languages.

 

There are many examples of the problems - one fairly well reported one was when a windsurfer got lost, fell off his board and drifted onto a beach in Ireland - his phone worked but the operator could not understand his 'words' irrespective of how many times he said them or however many times she repeated them.

 

For the future - what happens when everyone has got used to W3W and everyone (emergency services etc) has converted to it and the 'owners' suddenly decide to commercialise it by charging ?

 

I really do not know what the problem is with lat / long GPS positioning, it can get you to within a few feet of a specific location.

[Machpoint005]

22 minutes ago, Athy said:

Sho' nuff. I'd rather the squares were three yards or ten feet in diameter, too.

 

 

That would be a mistake.

 

1. Squares do not have diameters.

 

2. The OS National Grid is metric, and has been metric since 1936 (1962 to current datum), meaning that there is a direct relationship between the WTW reference and the 1-metre grid reference.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited April 25, 2023 by Machpoint005
Dates corrected

[ditchcrawler]

1 hour ago, magnetman said:

I can see the Amazon delivery van coming along the towpath.

 

 

 

It happened last week and it had to be recovered.

[Athy]

50 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

That would be a mistake.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucky i wasn't being totally serious then.

I wasn't sure about the diameter bit, but I was sure that if I wrote it here and it was wrong, someone would quickly tell me. It's most often used in relation to circles, but surely not exclusively?

53 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

the telephone opereator in Kent has no idea what the Glaswegian who has fallen off a cliff at Ramsgate is saying.

 

.

Probably "Oh sh**!" which, while understood throughout most of the land, is not helpful in pinpointing location.

[Machpoint005]

8 minutes ago, Athy said:

Lucky i wasn't being totally serious then.

I wasn't sure about the diameter bit, but I was sure that if I wrote it here and it was wrong, someone would quickly tell me.<<

 

I know you weren't, but there is so much ignorant anti-metric invective on here that it needed pointing out. 

 

The metric system is here to stay, thank goodness. A coherent set of units makes so much sense.

 

 

 

[David Mack]

32 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

there is a direct relationship between the WTW reference and the 1-metre grid reference.

I don't know whether W3W use National Grid or not - it is OS intellectual property and there may be a fee to use it in this sort of application. But in any event OS grid only covers the UK, and W3W is worldwide so must use other grid systems.

[Athy]

18 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

I know you weren't, but there is so much ignorant anti-metric invective on here that it needed pointing out. 

 

The metric system is here to stay, thank goodness.

 

 

 

I'm sure that people will go the whole nine yards to get accustomed to it.

[MtB]

33 minutes ago, Athy said:

I wasn't sure about the diameter bit, but I was sure that if I wrote it here and it was wrong, someone would quickly tell me. It's most often used in relation to circles, but surely not exclusively?

 

Almost.

 

I'd suggest only things circular like circles and spheres have a diameter.

 

 

 

[Alan de Enfield]

11 minutes ago, David Mack said:

I don't know whether W3W use National Grid or not - it is OS intellectual property and there may be a fee to use it in this sort of application. But in any event OS grid only covers the UK, and W3W is worldwide so must use other grid systems.

 

The National Grid may be OS Intellectual property but W3W is defnitely independent & commercially owned (Mercedes have a 10% stake in the company).

 

What3words is a proprietary geocode system designed to identify any location on the surface of Earth with a resolution of about 3 metres (9.8 ft). It is owned by What3words Limited, based in London, England. 

 

 

Registered office address

What3words, Studio 301 Great Western Studios, 65 Alfred Rd, London, England, W2 5EU

 

Company status : Active

Company type : Private limited Company

Incorporated on : 5 March 2013

 

They have 6 active Directors, one of whose address is Mercedestrasse, Stuttgart.

Edited April 25, 2023 by Alan de Enfield

[MtB]

I've seen it suggested W3W have missed a commercial trick by not offering user-chosen combinations of three words for sale. 

 

For example I bet the combination ///football.wembley.stadium would be of some commercial value.

 

 

[magpie patrick]

41 minutes ago, Athy said:

I wasn't sure about the diameter bit, but I was sure that if I wrote it here and it was wrong, someone would quickly tell me. I's most often used in relation to circles, but surely not exclusively?

 Technically you are correct - circles and spheres have a constant diameter, certain other shapes are kinda circular but don't, e.g. an oval. On railways, a subject you and I both enjoy talking about, the radius of curvature varies on bends as the track eases into and out of bends, and that radius can be measured. (Radius is from centre point to edge of curve, so is half the diameter of a circle)

 

I think, however, that arguing a square has a variable diameter is pushing it a bit. 

[David Mack]

11 minutes ago, MtB said:

I've seen it suggested W3W have missed a commercial trick by not offering user-chosen combinations of three words for sale. 

 

For example I bet the combination ///football.wembley.stadium would be of some commercial value.

 

 

 

But which 3m square within the stadium complex would qualify for that name?

[Ronaldo47]

1 hour ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

The big problem with this system is 'language' not only regional accents that means the telephone opereator in Kent has no idea what the Glaswegian who has fallen off a cliff at Ramsgate is saying.

The other issue is actual pronunciation and how 'non-English speakers' say certain letters / words - for example for Scandinavians, Dutch and Germans (and others) the word 'Joker' would be pronounced "Yoker" (Js are Y's)

 

Do the 'words' translate for every different country, or are the words different in every language ?

I can imagine I'd have problems if I needed to use W3W in Africa, China etc if they were in the local languages.

 

There are many examples of the problems - one fairly well reported one was when a windsurfer got lost, fell off his board and drifted onto a beach in Ireland - his phone worked but the operator could not understand his 'words' irrespective of how many times he said them or however many times she repeated them.

 

A few years ago when I had to telephone a company in Texas, I had to do my best John Wayne impression to get the operator to understand me when spelling out the name of my company and the extension I needed. 

 

More recently I had problens with a voice recognition system at my local hospital which asked you for the name of the person you needed and had no obvious option of speaking to an operator. The name of the foreign doctor was one of those with virtually no vowels, and after getting connected to the canteen, the stationery store and the mortuary, I used the extension of the secretary of a different doctor I had seen about something different and spoke to a human who was able to look it up for me.  

Edited April 25, 2023 by Ronaldo47

[Athy]

8 minutes ago, magpie patrick said:

 

 

I think, however, that arguing a square has a variable diameter is pushing it a bit. 

I certainly wouldn't say that it has a variable diameter, no.

I'm away from my S.O.D. at the moment, and on-line definitions are inconclusive: they tend to state that diameter is USUALLY used with regard to a circle. Yes, I knew that...although one source did mention trees, which tend to be roundish but not strictly circular.

Jury still out.

[MtB]

14 minutes ago, David Mack said:

 

But which 3m square within the stadium complex would qualify for that name?

 

I don't think it matters, but I bet there is an organisation somewhere that would pay money to get that combination of words. Which was my point.

 

I can't for the life of me imagine what organisation that might be though....

[Machpoint005]

35 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

Almost.

 

I'd suggest only things circular like circles and spheres have a diameter.

 

 

 

 

1. Circles

2. Spheres

3. Cylinders

4. That's it.

.