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w3w

It's really cool - do you know the history of it?

A 3m x 3m square is a pretty good accuracy - but the limiting factor is the device that gives that information.
 
We posted this a few years ago. Interesting idea. Not seen any evidence of it catching on thus far.
Can't recall the title of the thread.

Handy because frankly some addresses / post codes are just wrong. Having something that can peg your actual front door, not simply the road is neat. It might mean that Yodel could deliver parcels accurately rather than leave them on a different street.
 
It's really cool - do you know the history of it?
No, how did it come about ? It looks like it's beginning to catch on, going to be integrated into sat navs on Mercedes and TomTom are taking it up too this year according to the website. Brilliant for search and rescue.
And as you say Chris, good for courier firms, though it might mean the end of things like this apology biscuit (???) I got sent after a recent cock up..........

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Edit: Just discovered that it was developed to get bands to the right place for gigs, very handy.
 
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Ah, thanks. I missed that one, good thread. :)
 
It probably hasn’t caught on because there’s absolutely no point to it!! There’s already plenty of ways out there for doing this such as google map pins, gps grid referencing, os map referencing etc etc
 
I don't know... I can see times when it is advantageous.

For example, here in Aus the property numbers make sense... for example, if you lived a 12 Dirt Road, Area, then the property would be 120m from you turning onto the road. If it was 1405, it would be 14.05km along the road.

In contrast, my parents live in a house in the UK that has a house name, no number... and no street names either. So the old Royal Snail is fine - they know everywhere - but the parcel companies are hit and miss. Post code gets you there, but no further to finding the place.

So, What3Words makes giving an address really easy over the phone - much easier than a 8 digit OS grid reference (ignoring sheet reference - so that becomes 2 letters and 8 numbers)
 
I quick look at my Garmin software reveals it currently has 30 different GPS coordinate systems it can work off, OS Grids are only useful in the UK and again there are probably a French IGN version and US version etc etc.

The other issue is a street address is only a s good as those who set up the system, one of my previous project we had to send out thousands of legal letters a week for a lot of the year, and not even the post office have a complete set of postal addresses in the UK.

If this system continues to grow as it has been it could well be very big in the future
 
There’s about 10,000 properties in the Comarnic district and we all share the same postcode, it’s nuts!
 
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