What3Words Going Mainstream?

[biggs682]

A family friend collapsed in a field a while back , the person who found her was a paramedic and he got an ambulance crew to her using the app

 

[Lovacott]

I think if they removed the plurals it would be better. Your example might be picked up as logo.mermaid.cemented, which is in the middle of Brazil, or logos.mermaids.cemented, which is in South Australia and no use when you need assistance in Bideford.
(edited to fix a typo)

The local emergency services have been pushing W3W in the farming community recently and the plural thing has been raised.

However, nobody in South Australia or Brazil is going to be calling Bideford Fire Brigade so those fears were quickly assuaged.

 

[winjim]

The only time it can go wrong is when the three words spoken are not the three words heard.

Cats.Onion.Chair becomes Cat.Onions.Chair (Wallnut Street Illionois becomes the middle of the Colorado River in Bullshead Arizona).

I think if they removed the plurals it would be better. Your example might be picked up as logo.mermaid.cemented, which is in the middle of Brazil, or logos.mermaids.cemented, which is in South Australia and no use when you need assistance in Bideford.

(edited to fix a typo)

Not much good if you need to call help and your teeth have been knocked out, or you've bitten your tongue, or been punched in the face, or had a drink, or even if you just have a lisp or something.

 

[Edwardoka]

It's not useless but it has many flaws, it's not nearly as clever as they think, as it's a closed ecosystem the people who use it are unable to address the issues.

Homophones and plurals/words that end or begin with sibilants exist within their database, which undermines a lot of what they're trying to achieve.
It would have been trivial for them to use one of the many pre-existing algorithms that determine phonetic similarity to prune their wordlists, but this simple task was apparently beyond them.

 

[Edwardoka]

The local emergency services have been pushing W3W in the farming community recently and the plural thing has been raised.

However, nobody in South Australia or Brazil is going to be calling Bideford Fire Brigade so those fears were quickly assuaged.

 

[winjim]

It's just a simplified indexing method for using existing mapping technology.

Every dot on the planet has a Lat Long reference and all they've done is assign three words to each dot down to an accuracy of 3m x 3m.

If you choose to navigate using W3W, it opens your preferred navigation platform and inputs the Lat Long garnered from the three words you have input.

Yes I know, but

it's a closed ecosystem

which was my point. We don't know how it works because they won't tell us.

 

[Dogtrousers]

Seems like a solution looking for a problem to me. It seems to be aimed at easing person to person communication of co ordinates. But these days machine to machine transmission is almost universal, so unless there is a person in the communication chain, hearing the words and typing them into a computer what's the point?

For example, the oft repeated case of a person in need of rescue reading their coords from the app and speaking them to emergency services. Sounds great but - as I understand it (could be wrong) - all modern phones do this seamlessly, more quickly and with greater precision machine-to-machine in the background of an emergency call. Surely that makes What Three Words a slow and complicated alternative.

What am I missing?

 

[dodgy]

What am I missing?

That the person in distress has a patchy signal, brevity is everything in these cases.

 

[Bonefish Blues]

It'll be loaded by many people, because curious about their 3 words. It'll be forgotten. Until it's needed, when to use it is completely non-technical. Isn't that the compelling usp?

 

[dodgy]

It's not perfect, but it is compelling. So much so that the emergency services are already using it. We can claim it's crap (I don't think it is), tell the large organisations that are using it, not us 🤷‍♂️

 

[Dogtrousers]

That the person in distress has a patchy signal, brevity is everything in these cases.

In which case messing around opening a second app, rather than just calling emergency, speaking, and relying on automatic transfer is going to take ages.

I have no info on the transmission of emergency location. I could look it up, but I'd guess that it's as robust*, if not more so, than voice comms. Again I don't know so I'm unwilling to speculate.

I'm still puzzled by how it can be useful. There must be some compelling use cases, surely.

* Edit. A quick poke around suggests it's called ELS and relies on SMS, which is way down the stack and supported over 2G.

 

[Edwardoka]

In which case messing opening a second app, rather than just calling emergency, speaking, and relying on automatic transfer is going to take ages.

I have no info on the transmission of emergency location. I could look it up, but I'd guess that it's as robust, if not more so, than voice comms. Again I don't know so I'm unwilling to speculate.

A couple of examples:

1. someone without a mobile signal but with a walkie talkie
2. someone in a group gets into trouble in a place without mobile signals, the person who goes to get help can much more easily remember the word triplet than coordinates

The idea isn't terrible, only the system and the litigious peanuts who built it are.

 

[dodgy]

In which case messing around opening a second app, rather than just calling emergency, speaking, and relying on automatic transfer is going to take ages.

And yet, it works. There are plenty examples of it.
You're in denial, it honestly works, it just does, I'm not joking 🤷‍♂️

 

[Dogtrousers]

A couple of examples:

1. someone without a mobile signal but with a walkie talkie
2. someone in a group gets into trouble in a place without mobile signals, the person who goes to get help can much more easily remember the word triplet than coordinates

The idea isn't terrible, only the system and the litigious peanuts who built it are.

Good examples, but very niche. If W3W are relying on these scenarios then I'd fear for their future.

As far as I can see the emergency scenario (other than the unusual cases above) can be better handled by Emergency Location Services (ELS) (below) provided it is appropriately rolled out.

A quick poke around tells me ELS relies on either SMS or HTTPS. SMS is way down the stack and supported over 2G, so the "weak signal" scenario doesn't give W3W any advantage. HTTPS relies on a data connection. Drawbacks of ELS being that you need an appropriate Apple/Android phone (reportedly 99% of active Android devices do, not sure about Apple) and it needs to be supported by your network provider and emergency provider. I don't know the rollout status.

So what's the usefulness outside of the emergency scenario?

Great for putting a location on a paper flyer (that doesn't support hyperlinks) seems like a good one.

I'm not knocking W3W. Just trying to understand how it can be useful

 

[Dogtrousers]

And yet, it works. There are plenty examples of it.
You're in denial, it honestly works, it just does, I'm not joking 🤷‍♂️

No, I'm just trying to unders/tand. I'm not setting this up as some kind of "fanboy" slagging match. I'm not in the least bit concerned by the usual criticisms of W3W - that they aggressively protect their IP.

I'm not suggesting that it doesn't work. Just that I can't see how it is better than the alternative.