Head-brick wall…
The fact that people are using something does not mean that it’s better. It just means they’re using it.
With respect this is clearly going over people’s heads… I’m genuinely tired of going over the same ground only to keep hearing “but it can do this, it can do that, it’s free…” so can lots of other systems.
If people still can’t see that one coordinate system is no better or worse than another then I’m clearly not going to be able to explain it.
I’m done.
(post withdrawn by author, will be automatically deleted in 24 hours unless flagged)
My point exactly. I fully understand that one co-ordinate system is essentially the same as the next, and I understand the interactions between apps however…
When all is said and done, everything else disregarded, ignoring the purported pros and cons of different technologies, the emergency services use W3W, ergo it is a better system for me to use.
So yeah, it’s better.
It all depends on the definition of better.
What is more accurate or what is which is more popular?
Although vastly different circumstance consider the media industry.
Betamax or VHS - in this example the less superior yet cheaper (and thus more popular) technology won out.
Cassettes Vs CDs.
CDs Vs minidisc Vs mp3
The successor won out not just because it was new tech but became popular due to its ease and convenience…
W3w offers that same convenience for the end user as other systems but is proving popular thus is becoming a winning solution.
There are parallels here with the electric car discussion.
Electric cars are not convenient enough for the mass population; either because of cost, range, style of car, ease of “filling up the tank” when on the move and other challenges
…once these are sorted and addressed the popularity will increase. It might not be “better” but it will prove popular and from a marketing point of view that is what wins!
another good example!
No, but it can give me lat/long coordinates for France.
It is odd that OS locate can’t locate you but W3W can. OS Locate does not require any sort of connection to OS resources, it simply performs a mathematical calulation based on the output from the GPS receiver built into your phone. Did you have GPS disabled prior to starting OS locate, and then try using W3W after that, or W3W first? GPS systems can take a while to get an initial GPS fix from a “cold” start.
It’s global in a single language. Once you try translating into other languages and back it doesn’t work as well.
Beans.Again.Voting gives us Nelsons Column, but once you throw that into google translate and back again, Spanish gives us Beans.Aghain.Vote (In California) and korean gives us Bean.Again.Vote (which doesn’t exist).
I’m sorry, what is the problem? It’s three literal strings providing a key to a location lookup. What you’ve done is manipulate them and are surprised that changing the three words takes you to a different location.
My point being that numbers (lat lon) doesn’t require translation. . .
Nor do the literal strings.
read the website
what3words is currently available in 26 languages: English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, Swahili, German, Turkish, Swedish, Italian, Mongolian, Arabic, Finnish, Polish, Danish, Norwegian, isiXhosa, isiZulu, Greek, Dutch, Czech, Afrikaans, Bahasa Indonesia, Japanese, Korean, and Thai. We are working on many more including Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese (simplified and traditional characters), Urdu and a number of Indian languages including Hindi, Bengali, and Marathi.
i don’t believe you can consider throwing beans.again.voting into Google translate and expect the same to be valid in French or German - in those examples the location will be French or German words which refer to the same location, but not necessarily the same words in English…
So how can you tell your french friend to meet at X if when they translate what you’ve said, they go to Y?
The whole point of the system is that I can just say 3 words to specify the 3m2 square. if its completely different words in different languages then it’s not operable between languages.
pass i am a CFAV entering into discussion on a CFAV themed board not a w3w expert.
I would suggest “share location” on the app???
I don’t know i don’t have it, but i used exactly that feature on Whatsapp on the weekend.
I placed the pushpin on the map and hit share and my friend found the location.
If you can find the location title from the app i would expect there to be a “share” option
You have missed the point. There is not one system, there are 28 or so that use a similar concept but with different words. if you use a french coordinate it needs to be decoded in the french system, the german coordinate in the german system etc.
it is like the system itself doesn’t have true global scope, even if it can produce global coordinates. Best solution to this of course is for everybody to use Engligh (isn’t it always? 
). Or use lat/long.
Nope. I completely get that point. Within each languages, yeah sure it’s a global system, but when you start trying to pass that location to another language there are issues, unlike using numbers (ie lat/lon)
Well if I’m meeting my French friend I would expect that we would have a common language, otherwise the conversation might not be great, so whichever language we start in we finish in no translating allowed.
But will you have the french version of the app, or they the english version, to decode the other’s locations?
If you use the website, you change the language and type in whatever they sent you in that language. You click the “Cog button”, Language and then click on whatever language you want.
Its pretty simple.