What Three Words - For the dinosaurs here :)

[IanD]

1 minute ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

1. Circles

2. Spheres

3. Cylinders

4. That's it.

.

5. Toroids 🙂

Edited April 25, 2023 by IanD

[Machpoint005]

37 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

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.

 

That doesn't alter the fact that it is directly referable to a 1m grid reference.

 

 

[MtB]

Just now, IanD said:

Toroids 🙂

 

I thought it was a load of toroids too.

 

We seem to be limiting our thinking here to two and three dimensions, however. What's a four dimensional 'sphere' called? 

[Machpoint005]

1 minute ago, IanD said:

5. Toroids 🙂

 

A torus doesn't have one single diameter. All my figures or solids do, one and only one.

 

That's why I deliberately didn't add cone.

 

 

 

1 minute ago, MtB said:

 

I thought it was a load of toroids too.

 

We seem to be limiting our thinking here to two and three dimensions, however. What's a four dimensional 'sphere' called? 

 

A hypersphere, which has a hyperdiameter.

 

[IanD]

1 minute ago, MtB said:

 

I thought it was a load of toroids too.

 

We seem to be limiting our thinking here to two and three dimensions, however. What's a four dimensional 'sphere' called? 

A hypersphere -- like a 4D cube is a hypercube...

[Machpoint005]

Presumably!

 

[David Mack]

3 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

That doesn't alter the fact that it is directly referable to a 1m grid reference.

There will be a mathematical relationship between the two grids. But the two won't necessarily be directly reference. The OS grid is istr a section of a cone which is a good fit to the spherical surface of the earth over the extent of the British Isles. But it is only one of an infinite number of such approximations, and there is no reason to assume that W3W have used the same as OS, particularly since W3W must have a series of local approximations to the earth's surface, whereas OS is only concerned with the British Isles.

[magpie patrick]

15 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

1. Circles

2. Spheres

3. Cylinders

4. That's it.

.

 A curiosity... 

 

the 50 pence piece has a constant diameter but it isn't circular - you can make a roller that shape but not a wheel (or not a very good wheel anyway...) 

 

 

16 minutes ago, IanD said:

5. Toroids 🙂

combining with another thread - are vinyl records toroids? 

[IanD]

1 minute ago, magpie patrick said:

 A curiosity... 

 

the 50 pence piece has a constant diameter but it isn't circular - you can make a roller that shape but not a wheel (or not a very good wheel anyway...) 

 

 

That's so it works in coin vending machines...

[cuthound]

58 minutes ago, Alan de Enfield said:

 

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.

 

I'm amazed that they don't put their What3Words  location in the registered office address!  

 

 

Edited April 25, 2023 by cuthound
Missing letter

[magpie patrick]

34 minutes ago, Athy said:

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

 

 You think a square has a fixed diameter? 

[MtB]

4 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

I'm amazed that they don't put their What3Words  location in the registered office address!  

 

 

 

And not only that, but nominate the location as ///what.three.words.

 

Or maybe they did! 

[enigmatic]

1 hour ago, ditchcrawler said:

It happened last week and it had to be recovered.

Was that the one at Lymm? Saw a wheel overhanging the side of the canal and was glad I always used Click and Collect... 

 

[Alan de Enfield]

27 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

That doesn't alter the fact that it is directly referable to a 1m grid reference.

 

 

 

No it doesn't but that was not my point.

My point is / was they are a commercial company who made an operating loss of £43 million in 2021. 

I can see in the very near future, when everyone has been sucked in, there will be a cost applied to using W3W.

 

Maybe there will be no charge for the emergency services, but anyone using it will have to pay-to-use - maybe like a car-park payment you have to have an app and sign up, or maybe there will be a monthy subscription, I can think of a number of ways it can be implemented.

[Richard10002]

2 hours 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.

 

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.

Arent you predictable

 

W3W is available in 50 languages. I presume you can use English wherever you are in the world.

 

Are you suggesting there would be no language type difficulties in giving the numerical GPS position over the phone, with all the different accents etc.?

 

What about the difficulties many people would have in actually finding their Lat/Long.

 

Agreed that it needs monetizing, just like the OS system and the GPS systems are.

[Machpoint005]

8 minutes ago, Richard10002 said:

W3W is available in 50 languages. I presume you can use English wherever you are in the world.

 

I didn't know that. There must Shirley be problems with translating the WTW into some languages, as many have a much smaller vocabulary than English, so several synonyms in English could all translate into the same word in, say, Spanish.  Perhaps they have thought of that. 

 

 

 

 

[Richard10002]

2 minutes ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

I didn't know that. There must Shirley be problems with translating the WTW into some languages, as many have a much smaller vocabulary than English, so several synonyms in English could all translate into the same word in, say, Spanish.  Perhaps they have thought of that. 

 

You would think so:

 

http://support.what3words.com/en/articles/3624885-how-many-languages-is-what3words-available-in

 

 

[alias]

1 hour ago, Machpoint005 said:

 

1. Circles

2. Spheres

3. Cylinders

4. That's it.

.

 

5. Cones 

 

[Bacchus]

I quite like the concept of what three words, but I can see the problems too, especially as it uses plurals.  The w3w that identifies my front gate can also be a place in Norfolk (Norfolk Virginia!!) or Quebec depending on which of the three words is pluralised, which does seem a little vulnerable, and also the 3m squares can easily put you inside or outside of  building, or on the bridge/in the river!

 

I did offer three words to a courier who couldn't find my address recently... they couldn't find it with w3w either. I suspect the eBay seller rather than the courier, but at least I tried.

 

Interestingly, although the company have used 40,000 words, they could have made do with 4,000 which could open up the possibility of a numerical equivalent that might be better? 1234.5678.1234 - people tend to be able to remember four digit numbers, it would be easy enough to remember three of them.

[Jerra]

4 hours 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.

 

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.

Assuming the person has to use a phone then the pronunciation problem still exists.   The thing IMO is that everybody nowadays tends to have at least one mobile phone in the party.

[magnetman]

Modern smartphones apparently send the location automatically when doing an emergency call. 

 

W3W seems clever but in most situations it is probably going to be rather pointless over time as smartphones become more and more advanced.

 

 

[Rebotco]

5 minutes ago, Jerra said:

Assuming the person has to use a phone then the pronunciation problem still exists.   The thing IMO is that everybody nowadays tends to have at least one mobile phone in the party.

If you texted the W3W location there would be no problem with hearing mistakes.

[tree monkey]

1 minute ago, Rebotco said:

If you texted the W3W location there would be no problem with hearing mistakes.

Auto correct catches all of us though 

 

[Jerra]

1 minute ago, Rebotco said:

If you texted the W3W location there would be no problem with hearing mistakes.

True.  Never having had to call the emergency services can you call them by text or would you need to ring and then text the three words?

1 minute ago, tree monkey said:

Auto correct catches all of us though 

 

Surely not if you check before sending.

[tree monkey]

14 minutes ago, Jerra said:

True.  Never having had to call the emergency services can you call them by text or would you need to ring and then text the three words?

Surely not if you check before sending.

Have you never sent a text or post without an error then? I do all the time