# what3words



## M. Robert Gibson (Aug 15, 2019)

I've just discovered this geeky thing





						About us | what3words
					

About what3words | what3words is a really simple way to talk about location. People use what3words to find their tents at festivals, navigate to B&B’s, and to direct emergency services to the right place.



					what3words.com
				





> We have assigned each 3m square in the world a unique 3 word address that will never change.



Here are couple of interesting addresses








						///sulk.held.raves
					

This is the what3words address for a 3 metre square location near Washington, D.C..




					what3words.com
				











						///fence.gross.bats
					

This is the what3words address for a 3 metre square location near London.




					what3words.com
				




I discovered it through this article, which show it does have real-world practical uses








						The three random words which could save your life
					

Jess Tinsley and her friends were lost in the woods as the weather turned but a little known app helped track them down




					www.gazettelive.co.uk


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## Danny McG (Aug 16, 2019)

I had the app a few months ago, it was just taking space up on my phone but not getting used so I deleted it.

I think I looked up my own address (can't recall the 3 words now) and addresses of a couple of my kids.

I could see it would be useful in some circumstances but not for me. If ever my wife wants us to go travelling again I'll probably download it.


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## -K2- (Aug 24, 2019)

On the other hand... Some of these names become rather long.
As an example, I just clicked on a random square and this is the name that came up: *graphic.introduces.renovating *.
That's *29* characters including the periods and NOT the longest words that might be used.  27 of the characters could potentially be any one of *26* letters of the latin alphabet.  More so, the words are randomly applied, so, there is no rhyme or reason to give you a general idea as to where something is.

On the other hand, the entire Earth's surface roughly makes up 510,100,000,000,000 sq. meters / 9 = 56,677,777,777,778 possible grid squares, of which each would have JUST AS unique an I.D., but, is at _most_ only made up of *18* characters including commas. 14 of the characters can only potentially be one of 10 numerals... and naturally, the numbers could be applied with some logic about them.

Oddly, the developer states: "he tried sharing GPS coordinates instead. But asking people to meet at the likes of 40.7127753, -74.0059728 was just _too unreliable_. Entering *16* numbers into a device, or even sharing them over a phone call, can pretty easily go wrong." (?)* *

Considering how people tend to flub up their texting, or use texting lingo (besides the fact that most people cannot spell to save their lives), I'm guessing that the whole thing is some system to help folks who can't count to ten on their fingers... or, to sell people more nonsensical garbage until another silly system comes along, to add your info into their database (to be sold as datametrics, naturally). 

K2


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 24, 2019)

I’ve used the concept in a short story once


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