[OSM-talk] What3words

[Maarten Deen]

On 2016-07-13 11:35, Colin Smale wrote:
> On 2016-07-13 10:23, Lester Caine wrote:
> 
>> W3W and OLC both have the same problem. They are trying to fix
>> something
>> which is not really broken.
> 
> I disagree with this... They are not trying to replace / fix up
> lat/lon, they are providing a lingua franca for people to use when
> communicating. It's an alternate form of address, not an alternate
> form of location. They are intended for use by humans - so being
> short, memorable and reliable is an advantage. This is where W3W wins
> it from OLC as accurately remembering three words is easier than
> remembering a "random" sequence of symbols, and when you read it out
> over the phone the chances of a misunderstanding producing an existing
> but wrong result are minimal.

It can not be used by humans without aid because using it means you need 
electronic equipment to a) translate w3w to a location and b) find the 
location.
As opposed to regular addresses that can be found very easily by locals.
If you give me a streetname in my hometown, I can find it.
Certainly much easier than having to learn the about 500.000 unique W3W 
combinations that are in my (not so big) hometown.

> Us westerners are spoilt with our wonderful postal addressing
> systems... There are many, many areas in the world which don't have
> street names or even house numbers. Telling someone where you live
> means a whole chunk of descriptive text like "second red building on
> the left".

But to get there, to translate the W3W address to a location, you need a 
GPS and a translation from W3W to coordinates anyway. I mean, how would 
you otherwise find casino.premiums.scream?
GPS'es are usually sophisticated enough to store waypoints. So the only 
fix W#W gives is that during communicating the location you do not have 
a pen and paper to write down the location.
It is useless for locals because they need a computer and a GPS, it is 
unnecessary for deliverypeople because they have a GPS and can use 
lat/lon that is written on letters or packages.

And in this example: is it casino.premiums.scream? Or 
casino.premium.scream? Or casino.premiums.cream?
And how does that sound when a non-english speaker pronounces it? And is 
transliteration to and from cyrillic (in the case of Mongolia) 
straightforward?

I am still not convinced that it solves anything.

Maarten