Mongolia is changing all its addresses to three-word phrases

http://qz.com/705273/mongolia-is-changing-all-its-addresses-to-three-word-phrases/

by taylorbuley • 10 years ago

216 186 10 years ago

brechmos• 10 years ago

I didn't see any discussion in the article of having different languages but the what three word website talks about it.

One thing that I don't quite understand is two locations very near each other have completely different sets of words. I would have thought there would be some sort of hierarchy of words (sort of like geocoding a lat long where it defines a box and the precision of the geocoding gives you larger or smaller boxes).

I wonder too if there are going to be collisions of words and locations that aren't going to make people too happy. Though they must have thought through that too.

Either way it is an interesting idea.

phire• 10 years ago

Experimenting with their map, You get a new set of words every square foot or so.

If you don't like the 3 words it gives you, just offset the location by a foot or two until you find a set of 3 words you like.

zeotroph• 10 years ago

The idea is brilliant, however

If you don't like the 3 words it gives you

After trying some locations, I think they should have purged their dictionary of obviously negative words. Ending up with `glorified.bodily.passage` is just bad luck and can't be avoided, but `snored`, `brainwashed` or `grieved` are just bad in any context.

Also, some ground offset in meters (grazed.across.like.7) or the ability to go beyond 3x3 meters like a fractal would allow you to specify individual drawers or even pencils inside them.

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

It's designed to be dependent on their proprietary implementation.

MGRS is (approximately) a dense encoding of UTM coordinates, at similar precision it's a lot less memorable than 3 words:

4QFJ 12345 67890

(from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_grid_reference_system )

But it does have the property that coordinates are easy to compare to each other. Less precision can be used just by dropping digits:

4QFJ 1234 6789 - the 10 meter zone that the 1 meter zone above falls inside

4QFJ 123 678 - the 100 meter zone

mikeash• 10 years ago

If Wikipedia is to be believed, that's intentional as an error-detecting mechanism:

"The result is that if you enter athree-word combination slightly incorrectly and the result is still a valid w3w reference, the location will be so far away from the user’s intended area that it will be immediately obvious to both a user and an intelligent error-checking system."

I'm skeptical of just how well that'll work, personally. Witness the example of the truck driver who drove to Gibraltar, England instead of the one next to Spain.

mhurron• 10 years ago

It did say intelligent error checking. People have proven themselves to be idiots.

forkandwait2• 10 years ago

I looked at the website, and couldn't figure out what makes this a good idea... Especially compared to geohashing.

tantalor2• 10 years ago

Geohashes are not human friendly. It's easy to screw up a geohash when transferring it.

forkandwait2• 10 years ago

I don't think meaningless combinations of three words are particularly human friendly either...

contingencies• 10 years ago

The correct solution to a transcription error is a checksum algorithm. See for example the implementation I made for reverse-searching incorrect IBAN from a liberal list of probable transcription errors @ https://github.com/globalcitizen/php-iban/ .. it's very fast, cheap and accurate.

baq• 10 years ago

it's the same basic idea as with the xkcd style 4-word passphrase. it's easy to remember four words.

gonvaled6• 10 years ago

Why english?

krallja2• 10 years ago

    Users can look up these three-word locations,
    which have been translated into Mongolian,
    for free on the What3Words website or app.

tantalor2• 10 years ago

The words were literally translated? That makes no sense... the meaning of the words is not important.

gonvaled6• 10 years ago

And surely the mongolian translation has been carefuly vetted like the original english one ... no offensive phrases in mongolian?

Grue3• 10 years ago

The article lists Mongolian US embassy address as "constants.stuffy.activism", except the map they link to gives me the address "indoor.sheepish.blues". How can it be an address if it changes with time?

ovis2• 10 years ago

It changes every three meters, so perhaps it depends on which room in the embassy?

waterphone• 10 years ago

It doesn't. It's a grid system with 3 meter squares, each one having its own trio of words. Move the point 3 meters in any direction and you'll get a different one. This allows much more precise and close together addresses, down to the entrances of doors or gates.

dmuth• 10 years ago

So it's like DNS for GPS coordinates. Neat!

krallja2• 10 years ago

Yes, except unlike DNS, it's centralized into a single database and you may have to pay a license fee to read from it.

themihai6• 10 years ago

You pay for domains so it's not all that different.

creshal2• 10 years ago

It can't be that hard to reverse engineer the algorithm, can it?

eonw• 10 years ago

that didnt dawn on me until you said it... quite the catch.

rakoo3• 10 years ago

I really don't think it's a smart move to have a national entity totally depend on a private company that has no plans to make its database freely accessible for its operations; the worst being that said private company is foreign, meaning that Mongolia has 0 leverage on how the database will evolve, it is going to be completely at the mercy of What3Words' changes of policy and access rights.

Unless What3Words' database is going to be fully accessible with no restrictions for everyone, this really looks like a bad idea.

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

They can just appropriate the information.

I guess they might have to break some treaties or something to do that, but a country isn't going to be beholden to a small foreign company for much of anything.

themihai6• 10 years ago

TPP could change that

creshal2• 10 years ago

a country isn't going to be beholden to a small foreign company for much of anything.

Mongolia depends on foreign aid. They'll think thrice before angering Uncle Sam, justified or no.

plumeria• 10 years ago

Their patent does not apply to Mongolia, right?

https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO14...

alcio• 10 years ago

The process to get the words from the coordinates is described in their patent https://patentscope.wipo.int/search/en/detail.jsf?docId=WO14.... From the equations, it's possible to reverse the wordlist.

joe_the_user• 10 years ago

That the process to get the word is patented doesn't seem like it would allay worries of the country becoming dependent on the company.

pc2g4d2• 10 years ago

I completely agree. Seems like the underlying technology wouldn't be that difficult to reimplement independently, or am I mistaken? Surely a few CS interns in Mongolia would be up for slapping together a vital national infrastructure project on the government's dime, eh?

sllabres• 10 years ago

Yes, and the used names have changed at least once in the past.

chasing• 10 years ago

Great idea, until your address is something like "persistent.ugly.pancake" "white.power.manatee..."

bryanlarsen• 10 years ago

Unless your yard is less than 3 square meters, you'll have more than one phrase for your address. Enumerate all the possible phrases, and choose the coolest one...

visarga3• 10 years ago

That means everyone has a pretty high probability to have a stupid address in their "bag-of-addresses".

Pamar2• 10 years ago

I have some doubts.

a) suppose I am in Apt #312 in Bellevue Mansion, Whatever Street 23, San Jose, California.

Apt. #311 is on a wildly different set, so how can I find out we are neighbours? Or how can I explain to someone where Whatever Street #21 is?

b) what if I have the same 3-words square, but you are on floor #7 and I am on floor #11?

qihqi• 10 years ago

the 3-words replaces Number+Street name, not anything else. So you can just append the other information.

hellow.world.hola Floor 7 Apt 781 City, Zip, ST, Country

jessriedel4• 10 years ago

No it replaces city, state, country too. (Yes, you might need to include some of those to be backwards compatible with the current mailing system, but that's not how this system would work.)

secstate• 10 years ago

I would add to the other comment that there are plenty of ways this doesn't improve your life in San Jose. But the Vox article points out those 70K people who live in a slum of Rio do have the benefit of a working system.

x1798DE• 10 years ago

I feel like it could definitely be made more user-friendly, though. Like instead of a random assortment of 3-word combinations, is there no way to assign them in an ordered fashion, so that "hill.stevedore.borg" is west of "hall.stevedore.bar". Or use a larger grid with an inset numeric system, like instead of blocking in 3 square meter chunks, use 30 square meter chunks with a 2-digit number next to it, like "hambone.impish.doorframe-3,3".

I kinda feel like any arbitrarily-ordered locational identifier will always feel clunky compared to an ordered grid system.

jessriedel4• 10 years ago

Address is pretty separate from directions in both the old and new system. The fact that I'm on Maple st. doesn't tell me anything about how close I am to Pine st., except in a small number of cities that have a useful naming system. So I say "Turn left on Maple, then right on Pine, then...". Likewise, here you say "turn right at maple.big.grumpy, then left at green.thick.rat".

This system is an improvement for locations with no road names (so it's not any harder to give directions) or with ubiquitous GPS (where you can directly convert). The number of places with road names but not ubiquitous GPS is on the fast decline.

Pamar2• 10 years ago

Maybe I am just dumb but I cannot really understand the "Address is pretty separate from directions in both the old and new system". You usually know where you live (i.e. how to get there) so the only reason you need to have some kind of coordinate system (be it "conventional" or the one we are discussing) is to tell someone other, including the postman, how to get to you.

I.e. - I really do not understand why "Hi Ibrahim, I live at Alpha-Unicorn-Honey, just drop here when you are in the area" would beat "The train stops at Nadira, from there you walk 2 miles in the direction of the sunset, when you reach a rock looking like a kneeling woman you turn in the direction of the face and walk anoter mile - and there is my hut".

So far the only place where I believe this system would help is in large Japanese cities (Tokyo) etc. because they don't have "named" streets, most of the time, and at the same time most people can be expected to have access to technology.

(Maybe it's the same in China, but never been there so I don't know how it is)

I sincerely doubt that people living on the outskirts of the Gobi desert will routinely exchange their three-words coordinates over whatsapp and then get Google Maps or whatever to guide them to the desired destination.

middleq3• 10 years ago

edgy.puns.lake

middleq3• 10 years ago

roughest.tickles.bath

middleq3• 10 years ago

Putting aside the potentially bad combinations, i feel as tho a hierarchical schema with the potential for arbitrary accuracy may be more suitable.

kibwen• 10 years ago

The idea is quite interesting, but the implementation only makes sense for sparsely-populated regions. An apartment in the city with two side-by-side doors to different units will easily fit within a three-meter square, meaning that you'll still require "Apt. #1, Apt. #2" designations to disambiguate. Similarly, the fact that this system accounts only for geographical surface coordinates means that any building with distinct addresses stacked vertically, like an apartment building, won't be able to be served by this system alone.

hx87• 10 years ago

Apartment units addresses will probably be based on the 3x3 square the most closely matches its outline, so door location will be irrelevant. Vertical stacks can be simply dealt with by assuming a standard 3 or 4 meter story, so unless you live in an industrial loft or something it won't be a problem.

dalke3• 10 years ago

Door location is how you can tell if a house is in the Netherlands or in Belgium, for Baarle-Nassau/Baarle-Hertog. Move the door and you move countries.

Outline is not time invariant. If I turn a duplex into a single family, or build out, then the shape changes. If I live in Coober Pedy and build out underground, then do I use the surface outline or the underground outline?

If I relocate the house a few meters away, the address definitely changes.

Really, this is best for the billions of people who have no address. Most likely it will boot-strap, so in 100 years the name "X.Y.Z" will refer to the ghost of the place that once was, but everybody local knows what it now means, as will the databases. With a layer of apt. #1, #2, etc. on top of that.

dalke3• 10 years ago

It doesn't depend on sparsely population regions, which is why it is also being used for Ulaanbataar.

It depends on being better than the current system (which is description based), and better than the alternatives (like putting up street signs everywhere).

Aaron1011• 10 years ago

One problem I see is that one particular address may end up with several 3-word addresses. Since physical distance doesn't affect the similarity of the combinations, how is one to determine the 'correct' combination for a particular location? This seems to compound the inherent problem of all 3-word combinations sharing the same namespace - I have no idea if two addresses are actually the same building, or on opposite sides of the planet.

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

For most things the adjacent addresses would be equivalent. It doesn't matter which part of the house a package is delivered to. In many cases someone picking an address won't really be able to get within 3 meters anyway.

I guess people looking at several addresses won't be looking at the words, they will have to have a resolver and look at them that way.

pavel_lishin2• 10 years ago

But it might matter if you're delivering five packages, and your system lists five addresses, even though they're all going to the same building.

trescube• 10 years ago

They should just use http://what2numbers.org/

pavel_lishin2• 10 years ago

I genuinely can't tell if that's an honest attempt at competition, or a parody.

jamesfe• 10 years ago

Meters from 0N/0S. And with that awesomely similar design...must be a parody!

Crespyl• 10 years ago

The styling strongly suggests it's a parody.

Scaevolus3• 10 years ago

40,000 words gives 15.29 bits per word, for a 45.86 bit locator. log2(area of earth / 9m^2) is 45.7.

Packing bits into phrases is also useful for passwords (https://rmmh.github.io/abbrase/), but in my experience the increased difficulty of correctly remembering phrases from a large wordlist outweighs the additional entropy.

4 words chosen from a 2800-word list would convey the same amount of information, and be less prone to confusion.

It looks like they're not attempting to make the triplets have consistent meanings between languages, which makes sense -- 40,000 word correspondences between 10 languages would be exceedingly difficult! logs.broker.remote is sweight.saum.zulässige is lodos.pasado.ninguno, none of which are the same meanings.

Another improvement would be a hierarchical system-- you can specify a more coarse location using more common words -- picking from a wordlist of 500 for a 4km^2 specifier, 2000 for for a 16 acre plot, 10000 for a 500m^2 area.

Bromskloss2• 10 years ago

Packing bits into phrases is also useful for passwords (https://rmmh.github.io/abbrase/), but in my experience the increased difficulty of correctly remembering phrases from a large wordlist outweighs the additional entropy.

I saw a paper with a nice method for generating passphrases. Unfortunately, I can't find it. (Can anyone help me?)

First, you generate random data with enough entropy for a passphrase. Then, instead of encoding it in a sequence of words that is as short as possible, you encode it in many (say, a million) sequences that are a bit longer. Each sequence thus encode the same data. Now, you feed all these sequences through an algorithm that gives each sequence a score depending on how close it is to being a natural-language phrase. Finally, you present the user with the sequences, ordered by their score, and let the user choose any one of the to use as passphrase.

Scaevolus3• 10 years ago

I don't know that paper, but that's similar to what's going in Abbrase. It shows the best-scored mnemonic using bigram and frequency heuristics, but you could show more alernatives to let users choose their own mnemonic.

You can see multiple alternative mnemonics using `abbrase.py -m` -- it hasn't been implemented in the web version yet. It does give better results, from "wave several ominous silence" (default based on heuristic score) to "waves sever ominous silk" or "wavy seven omitted silver" (human-chosen mnemonics).

kerkeslager• 10 years ago

I saw a paper with a nice method for generating passphrases. Unfortunately, I can't find it. (Can anyone help me?)

DiceWare[1] doesn't do the filtering you're talking about, but it does provide a method of generating passphrases by converting entropy into words. PGP Word Lists[2] use a packing technique as well, with even/odd words for error detection.

I haven't seen the paper you're talking about, but I'm highly suspicious of using an algorithm to score phrases by how close to natural language they are without a proof of security.

If you score natural-ness using, for example, comparing overlapping 2-word patterns to a database, then that database becomes a Markov chain database we can use to generate passphrase guesses, greatly reducing the entropy. Generating and discarding the patterns database from natural language material for each passphrase generation helps only inasmuch as two source databases from the same language are likely to differ. Maybe that's not the method used to test natural-ness, but I suspect that the better the natural-ness scoring function is, the better the corresponding passphrase generator will be. And remember, the user is going to decrease entropy even further by choosing their passphrase.

You can mitigate this by decreasing the number of passwords generated for the user to choose from, but this means less natural phrases. You can also mitigate it by increasing the passphrase space (that is, more words in your passphrase) but that decreases memorability.

Personally, I use 5-word DiceWare passphrases for most things, and 6-word DiceWare passphrases for the most important stuff. The proof of security for DiceWare is simple enough that you can do it yourself and be confident in it. The intent is not long-term memorability--in the age of leaked passwords stored or transferred in plaintext, password reuse is foolish, and I've yet to come across a scheme that allows me to memorize 30+ passwords. Instead the idea is short-term memorability so I can copy the passwords manually from my password manager. In practice the memorability is completely adequate for this purpose.

And even at 5 DiceWare-generated words, that's 2.8x10^19 possibilities, or a little under a year for an attacker with 1 trillion guesses per second capabilities.

[1] http://world.std.com/~reinhold/diceware.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PGP_word_list

Scaevolus3• 10 years ago

Oh, the wordlists for non-English languages are smaller (25,000 words each)! This makes sense, since English has a particularly large vocabulary.

Ocean squares (and Antarctica) don't appear to be localized -- log2(25000^3) = 43.82 > log2((land area of earth - area of antarctica) / 9m^2) = 43.8.

orbitingpluto• 10 years ago

Homonyms? Vertical addressing?

So do you live at peak.pique.peek, or peak.peek.pique? Or is it... What floor? Oh, you're on the top floor? So you leave on the peak of pique.peak.peek?

pc2g4d2• 10 years ago

I'd imagine that homonyms are avoided by careful selection of the reference word lists.

d0mine• 10 years ago

My guess there are 100s miles between anything that is similar (typos, same words but different order) i.e., you'll be able to figure out from the context which address is correct.

joeyh• 10 years ago

Also they use both plural and singular nouns, and hash them to different locations.

kragen• 10 years ago

This is absolutely hilarious, at least to my inner six-year-old. They seem to have filtered out words with obvious negative connotations like "ugly", words of under four letters, and maybe longer words. But through the magic of language, even very innocent words are subject to reinterpretation. And a lot of What3Words's words are actually not that innocent.

glorified.bodily.passage is in some farmland in the Netherlands, near Wijk en Aalburg: https://map.what3words.com/glorified.bodily.passage

beats.member.daily is in a gated community on Long Island: https://map.what3words.com/beats.member.daily

tugging.bunny.organ is a farmhouse or suburban house in Hungary: https://map.what3words.com/tugging.bunny.organ

pigs.pigs.pigs is a vacant lot in Loveland, Colorado: https://map.what3words.com/pigs.pigs.pigs

inflamed.flesh.massaged is some farmland near Stoke-on-Trent in England: https://map.what3words.com/inflamed.flesh.massaged

It's a lot worse in Spanish for some reason.

sixothree• 10 years ago

I guess the good news if your building is bigger than 3x3 meters than you get another chance?

knieveltech• 10 years ago

Well there goes my afternoon. Ladies and Gentlemen, needy.member.smoked:

https://map.what3words.com/needy.member.smoked

bradbeattie• 10 years ago

Other systems aren't immune to this problem. Permit me to introduce you to Dennett Pl, Delta, BC, Canada. Proud owner of the postal code V4G1N4.

afarrell• 10 years ago

for the Marvel fans, longing.rusted.furnace is a mountain road north of Verona, Italy. The system doesn't use numbers, so thats as far as you can go if you want to write some sort of Winter Soldier fanfiction based on this.

smcg• 10 years ago

just.like.home is in between a power plant and a chemical plant in England: https://map.what3words.com/just.like.home

realusername• 10 years ago

in French, they probably put the most unused words they could find in the dictionnary. As an example, you have 'maussaderie', 'taniser', 'houblonner', 'époussette' or 'numismate'. I'm sure a good proportion of native speakers would have to use a dictionnary to find the meaning.

bambax• 10 years ago

https://map.what3words.com/credit.card.denied is in Ontario

https://map.what3words.com/under.water.loans is south of London

https://map.what3words.com/shame.without.regret is in Norway

https://map.what3words.com/regret.without.shame is in Alaska

https://map.what3words.com/winter.winter.winter is near Chicago

https://map.what3words.com/summer.sunshine.happy is in Beijing

https://map.what3words.com/forgotten.previous.husband is in the middle of the south Atlantic ocean

https://map.what3words.com/imaginary.future.partner is somewhere in Russia

etc.

visarga3• 10 years ago

Even a small house has dozens of addresses. I checked and there is a different address in my kitchen than my bathroom, based on what3words website. If you find a certain combination offending, you can choose a different one, but on the other hand, on a single property there could be thousands of addresses, many of which funny or embarrassing.

neverminder• 10 years ago

Let's not forget https://www.google.com/maps/dir/Kissing,+Germany/Petting,+Ge...

acqq• 10 years ago

Also all valid:

surely.trim.organ stuff.small.organ tickle.long.organ milk.long.organ milk.needy.organ

glorified.body.openings

stiff.little.finger stiff.large.organ

take.fine.compost

wrong.wrong.wrong

jessedhillon• 10 years ago

They can't be trying very hard if swollen.member.blown is a valid address, which it is: https://map.what3words.com/swollen.member.blown

13of40• 10 years ago

It's interesting that this is so fun. (My home address resolves to something satisfyingly naughty.) An app that just generated random three word phrases wouldn't be fun, and neither would one that mapped every point on earth to a dirty phrase.

troygoode• 10 years ago

My house is “former.decent.wiping” :-/

lake99• 10 years ago

Are you sure you want to publicize your home address?

yumaikas• 10 years ago

Another address on that location that is rather funny is 'jeeps.fairly.cheat'

jor-el• 10 years ago

I am having atomic.dining.today.

msoad• 10 years ago

Maybe.Another.Day is a hospital in New York!

https://map.what3words.com/maybe.another.day

thesmok• 10 years ago

it's not found now =/

plaguuuuuu• 10 years ago

Those are absolute gold. I'm dying.

ygreg• 10 years ago

This system is incredibly accurate. The switch/server room in my company's office is located at renamed.random.wires.

maxerickson7• 10 years ago

This game should be called wat3words.

anc843• 10 years ago

FYI, their patent is probably bogus: http://patents.stackexchange.com/questions/13629/i-had-inven...

yegle• 10 years ago

Google developed a similar coding system called Plus Code https://plus.codes/

linkregister2• 10 years ago

This seems way easier to use. Also a postal service wouldn't have to do anything except open the website on the postal carriers' phones.

franciscop• 10 years ago

There was a really cool project using syllables such as consonant+vowel, then using two "words" with 3 syllables each such as:

"tapiku norami"

But the cool thing is that they were basically real gps coordinates just encoded as letters, so returning them to the original was trivial. I think a couple of letters were avoided to avoid confussion.

Unfortunately I cannot remember the name and they did a terrible SEO job...

vinc• 10 years ago

You could also use Lojban's numbering system[1] for example with GPS coordinates in decimal form to the same effect.

[1] https://en.m.wikibooks.org/wiki/Lojban/Numbers

dekobon• 10 years ago

I'm disappointed that they didn't use Mongolian words for the 3 words.

etjossem• 10 years ago

They did.

Users can look up these three-word locations, which have been translated into Mongolian, for free on the What3Words website or app.

rl3• 10 years ago

"alien.crash.landing"[0] is a remote farm field in Montana. Just the kind of place you'd expect.

"lower.life.expectancy"[1] is some patch of land in Colorado. I can't help but notice the two man-made pits containing unknown substances a few hundred meters north.

[0] http://w3w.co/alien.crash.landing

[1] http://w3w.co/lower.life.expectancy

KaiserPro2• 10 years ago

so they are going to use english words for their postal system?

doesn't sound very Chinese government to me. This has a hefty smell of bollocks to me.

chrischen3• 10 years ago

Mongolia is separate from China, however I brought up this same point since their language isn't English (it's Mongolian).

KaiserPro2• 10 years ago

My mistake, I'd assumed that it had been absorbed into china.

Turns out I was confusing that with Tibet. Embarrassing to say the least...

HoopleHead2• 10 years ago

Not this moronic shit again! Just let it die, fer Gawd's sake!

https://stiobhart.net/2016-01-15-stupidest-idea-ever

Sone7• 10 years ago

If you think :that's: dumb, check out the "Eircode" address System that Ireland's government spent an 8 figure sum on: http://www.irishexaminer.com/viewpoints/analysis/lost-and-fo...

HoopleHead2• 10 years ago

Wow! —the insanity is contagious.

rmc2• 10 years ago

Eircodes were created that way so that people wouldn't have to change their address at all. Which could be a politically difficult thing. Politicians choose the thing that made their life easier and stopped complaints.

chrischen3• 10 years ago

So people in Mongolia will use English words for addresses? The whole "easy to remember" is completely lost when it's a foreign language.

Imagine if America switched to three Chinese characters for an "easy to remember" address system.

In China numbers are often used inside of roman character email addresses, or domains, because roman characters are only convenient for westerners, much less English words.

See 1688.com (alibaba.com), or use of QQ numbers for email addresses.

linkregister2• 10 years ago

Thankfully now there is the IDN extension to DNS to use punycode to represent other character sets.

I agree with your original point that it is strange that the Mongol Post would want to use English words for addressing.

Edit: they support other languages; I assume they would add Mongolian to the list.

thaumasiotes• 10 years ago

Imagine if America switched to three Chinese characters for an "easy to remember" address system.

This sounds pretty unlikely even for China, since it's almost impossible to unambiguously name any particular character. When speaking, you would generally identify a specific character using a four-syllable phrase like 安静的静 (literally "the jìng of ānjìng [quiet]"). Why can't you just say jìng? Well, here are some other characters with the same pronunciation:

竟境镜敬竞净径靖劲痉胫婧獍靓

There are a few characters with unique pronunciations, like 给 or 谁, but those are very much not the norm.

The chinese version of what3words would be overwhelmingly likely to use words, not characters.

philliphaydon• 10 years ago

Singapore is a tiny island but it's system is Super easy. It uses post codes assigned to physical buildings. From a post code you can get the name of the building, street, and access.

ilaksh2• 10 years ago

I like mapcodes better: see mapcode.com

zelos• 10 years ago

I thought the same thing. They have the advantage of being public domain and a lot shorter.

ilaksh2• 10 years ago

https://github.com/google/open-location-code/blob/master/doc...

srtjstjsj• 10 years ago

http://openlocationcode.com/

bane2• 10 years ago

Why oh why is it so hard for countries to just apply a sensible addressing scheme? This is simply an attempt to simplify using coordinates with something more memorable. But now it's locked into a proprietary service and doesn't solve sub-unit addressing or routing. But whatever, I guess it's better than the current system which is basically a free form description of what somebody hopes the mail carrier can figure out.

This is a such a stupidly simple problem that it's become a pet peeve of mine whenever I see a place that hasn't been bothered to figure it out.

Here's 2 perfectly workable schemes that are used the world over (this is a free service I put into the public domain for the betterment of all humanity).

Scheme 1

1) Divide your country into postal zones, assign each one a number or an alphanumeric or whatever. Call these "zip codes" or "postal codes" or whatever the hell you want. Bonus, when routing mail, you route them only between these zones at the national level, and then let local offices handle the last mile figuring out of where something is supposed to be sent.

2) Name (or for goodness sake at least number) each road -- or do both. If your language or culture is unable to come up with enough interesting names for all of the roads in your country, it's okay, you can reuse names in different postal zones so long as a road doesn't cross between zones in which case you get to only use it once.

3) Number all of the land plots along a road. Final delivery from the postal system is to the land plot number. This works because every nation on the planet has some kind of system to track land ownership, and it's usually some kind of number.

4) Final delivery of mail is handled by people who subdivide that land plot. Addresses may contain some identifier of subunits on that landplot, but the postal delivery organization doesn't have to care.

Addresses are now of the form:<zip code>:<road id>:<land plot id>:<sub-unit id (optional)>:<Name to deliver to optional>

Some examples:

1543:Genghis Khan Street:16B-321:Unit C AZJ542:5123:1313:Mr. Altangerel District 213:Morinhuur Rd.:2116:Apartment 116:Anun Chinbat

The country can figure out if they want to use numbers, names, alphanumerics, whatever. But this isn't rocket science. This is the typical addressing scheme used most places that haven't completely lost their minds, just the fields are usually ordered the other way round.

Scheme 2

1) Divide the country into zones.

2) Divide those zones into zones.

3) Keep doing this until zones are guaranteed to be small enough to track the smallest allowable land plot. This is where the mail gets delivered by the formal system. Routing works by going up and down the hierarchy.

Addresses are now of the form:<Major subunit>:<Minor subunit>:<Local subunit>:<sub-unit id (optional)>:<Name to deliver to optional>

This system works well where roads aren't guaranteed and/or the country can't be bothered with naming the roads because of reasons. This is also a surprisingly common system in many places, but often gets eventually replaced with the scheme above.

AB:612:AJR 14-23:District 9:Khorkhog Place:Apartment 612-F:Mr. Tsedenbal Bayar:Damdin:Bogd:Yurt 5

Again, not rocket science. Easier to remember than coordinates and precise enough for mail delivery. Postal areas can be aligned with existing administrative zones, or whatever.

I remember being in Ireland and getting pretty annoyed trying to find anything because all anybody had for addresses outside of the big cities were coordinates. Yet nearly every road had at least a number, and Ireland is already pretty well divided into various administrative districts. So why the hell were we receiving nonsense like coordinates?

Asked the locals and the answer was some sort of tie up between the government and the postal system had delayed it forever. This was in 2013.

That's correct, a developed country, in the 21st century, couldn't be bothered to figure out a proper addressing system. (Apparently this has since been fixed, but seriously, why the fuck did it take that long?)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postal_addresses_in_the_Republ...

Things not to do:

- Make your postal codes proprietary or under copyright or some other stupid nonsense.

- Use a system with such low precision that it ends up going free-form text for local delivery. I'm aware of parts of England with such nonsense.

- Change the scheme over and over again. Pick one, implement it and be done with it.

- Use a system that doesn't aid in navigation at the local level. If I'm at local subunit 241, I can expect to find 240, 242, 243 and such nearby, while 893, 1023 and so on should be far away.

- Use land plot numbers that don't make any sense. In many places odd numbers will be on one side of a road and even will be on another. In some places, it's a different scheme. These schemes make sense and aid in navigation, random numbers don't.

- Don't use this kind of word-based scheme, it'll end up full of dick jokes and racial slurs without anybody knowing it, and it means entire swaths of the Earth will have to be nonsensically renamed over and over again due to regional slang phrases about people's mothers.

Again, this is free advice for anybody trying to start a national postal system, because apparently, here in the future of the 21st century, some places haven't bothered to sort themselves out yet.

Hondor• 10 years ago

Many of your reasons disappear when everyone has a smartphone. The software can convert whatever representation of a location into whatever description helps find it. That I think is better than locking "directions to help the postman" into the address itself. The postman's app can tell him how to find your street.

The idea of what 3 words is that it's easy to remember. Your suggestions are not. That's a massive weakness.

bane2• 10 years ago

For fun, try to get you and your friends to spend a few weeks trying to just use coordinates to get around. At several points, try to do it assuming no data connectivity, like what you'd experience in most of Mongolia. Hell, you can experience it in most of Colorado.

It turns out it's a terribly designed addressing system, replacing the numbers with words doesn't make it less terrible, only more memorable.

Assume your magic navigation device goes down, but you can call the destination you are going to and have them give you directions without using street names or designators, only landmarks. Try it from varying distances away. Instead of "turn left at Main st." you'll get "turn left at the second red building, I think, maybe the one with the white window shutters...you don't see one with white window shutters? well they have a restaurant next door with a neon sign...okay after that take the 3rd left, or is it the 4th?"

Or try to figure out not only which building you need to go to in a dense urban core, but which side of the street the building is on? While the coordinates you got put you within 3 meters of the building, the magic map device you're using can't get a lock on more than 2 GPS satellites at once and you're now 30 meters away from your destination.

Okay, so now you make it, and it's a 30 story building with 300 apartments. Which one is it? The coordinates get you near the base of the building, but not to the unit itself?

But that's okay, nobody's bothered to do something sensible like put numbers on their doors, or label the streets so when your app doesn't work you can still locally navigate. You can always wait around for a postman to arrive and ask him.

zimpenfish• 10 years ago

I gotta say - something like "flensing.badger.buttocks" is a lot easier to remember than "AB:612:AJR 14-23:District 9:Khorkhog Place:Apartment 612-F:Mr. Tsedenbal Bayar:Damdin:Bogd:Yurt 5"

pjc50• 10 years ago

every nation on the planet has some kind of system to track land ownership, and it's usually some kind of number.

I have some bad news for you there.

http://www.prai.ie/land-registry-services/ : "By international comparison, Ireland has a very extensive and well developed system of land registration.

...

93% of the total land mass of the State and almost 90% of the legal titles in Ireland are now registered in the Land Registry."

It's not 100%, and we can infer that most countries are worse off than that. Some, the well-planned, have full cadastral systems. Most have a title registry, but the plots will be defined by a picture of a hand-drawn map of each without proper coordinates. Some countries don't have a workable land registration system at all. The US doesn't have a national one and instead delegates it to states, leaving the USPS to invent ZIP codes and build its own system.

aestetix• 10 years ago

Wow. I spent a lot of time thinking about names and how they influence us. This has to be one of the stupidest ideas I have ever seen. They are just throwing out hundreds if not thousands of years of nomenclature etymology and replacing it with three randomly chosen english words.

Even Vonnegut's idea of reassigning everyone new last names in Slapstick made more sense than this.

prof_hobart• 10 years ago

Hmm.

A word with one letter difference from my house (in the English midlands) puts the address in the middle of mountains in western China.

It's annoying enough when a parcel gets delivered to an address near me because the delivery driver can't tell where my road ends and another one starts. But I'm not going to China to pick up my next Amazon order when someone miskeys.

xg153• 10 years ago

I would think (if this is always the case) it's more a feature than a bug: If you're a parcel service and ordered to ship a packet to a location in the US, you'll (hopefully) stop and think if the address appears to be in china. If the address were "just" in the wrong US state, on the other hand, you might have more trouble with it.

Of course that implies that the delivery service knows the supposed country of destination and that it cares. So I guess, should this way of addressing places catch on, we should probably make it a four-word phrase and also include the state with it.

ficklepickle• 10 years ago

Check out the Mongolia episode of the Canadian show "Don't drive here" if you don't get why this is better for them than the status quo.

Spoiler: Every citizen gets a parcel of land in Mongolia where they can put up a yurt. These yurt neighborhoods are nearly impossible to navigate if you don't live there (IIRC)

pinouchon• 10 years ago

https://map.what3words.com/pretty.code.running => right where my office is located (for real). Couldn't be happier about that.

dikei• 10 years ago

This reminds me of the Automated Curse Generator from DailyWtf

http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Automated-Curse-Generato...

ralf07• 10 years ago

I wonder how units/apartments in multi storey buildings are adressed.

Mongolia is changing all its addresses to three-word phrases

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