"What3words"- novel geographic website

[Robin-H]

2 minutes ago, Branyy said:

Ok, one more time. How's the app different to:

https://crisisresponse.google/emergencylocationservice/how-it-works/

A 42m radius area vs a 1m2 area.. Only half have a less then 20m accuracy. 

 

The WhatThree Words would appear to be able to pinpoint a location much more accurately. 

[Branyy]

5 minutes ago, Robin-H said:

A 42m radius area vs a 1m2 area.. Only half have a less then 20m accuracy. 

 

The WhatThree Words would appear to be able to pinpoint a location much more accurately. 

Yeah, that makes a difference, fair enough! Thanks!

[Janus]

Why not use both of these facilities? Surely they can only increase the chance of help if & when needed. 

Does the ELS system on android have to be initiated in some way or does it run automatically?

 

[alchemist]

On 16/08/2019 at 13:24, Branyy said:

Ok, one more time. How's the app different to:

https://crisisresponse.google/emergencylocationservice/how-it-works/

It works on non-android devices??

[Longcol]

I assume emergency services will still rely on maps / sat navs / gps co-ordinates to find their way to help.totally.lost or wherever, plus need a map overlay for example for mountain rescue to identify type of terrain in vicinity  eg scree slope, peat bog etc.

[altus]

1 hour ago, Longcol said:

I assume emergency services will still rely on maps / sat navs / gps co-ordinates to find their way to help.totally.lost or wherever, plus need a map overlay for example for mountain rescue to identify type of terrain in vicinity  eg scree slope, peat bog etc.

Yes they will.

 

This system doesn't actually provide more accuracy than a phone's GPS can - it gets it's location information using GPS after all. The real benefit is that it's very easy to read out GPS coordinates wrongly (or copy them down wrongly at the other end) and those sorts of transcription errors are far less likely with three words. I would hope they've picked words that are unlikely to be readily confused with each other.

[Longcol]

1 hour ago, altus said:

Yes they will.

 

This system doesn't actually provide more accuracy than a phone's GPS can - it gets it's location information using GPS after all. The real benefit is that it's very easy to read out GPS coordinates wrongly (or copy them down wrongly at the other end) and those sorts of transcription errors are far less likely with three words. I would hope they've picked words that are unlikely to be readily confused with each other.

Not 100% convinced of that seeing as police / emergency services often use the phonetic alphabet to ensure clear transcription of words but no equivalent needed for 0-9.

 

And just having had a look at it locally - all the words are english - not sure how this is going to pan out here in France (or anywhere else english isn't the first language). Evaluator.Anguished.Festoon unlikely to replace "Les Battuts" for the farm over the road.

Edited August 18, 2019 by Longcol

[altus]

11 minutes ago, Longcol said:

Not 100% convinced of that seeing as police / emergency services often use the phonetic alphabet to ensure clear transcription of words but no equivalent needed for 0-9.

The general public don't usually know the phonetic alphabet. This is more about avoiding reading things in the wrong order - remember an OS map reference from a GPS will have 10 digits. Compared to three words, that's far more likely to be relayed wrongly.

 

And just having had a look at it locally - all the words are english - not sure how this is going to pan out here in France (or anywhere else english isn't the first language).

I suspect any given country's emergency services will be able to understand mispronounced English words by that country's population.

[Longcol]

4 minutes ago, altus said:

I suspect any given country's emergency services will be able to understand mispronounced English words by that country's population.

I wonder how often they come across evaluator.anguished,festoon? 

 

Hardly words in everyday english use.

[altus]

11 minutes ago, Longcol said:

I wonder how often they come across evaluator.anguished,festoon? 

 

Hardly words in everyday english use.

They'd both tend to mispronounce it in the same way. Besides which, a different language version would be just a matter of changing the word table. It would be easy to produce localised versions.