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Comment by mostly_harmless | Hacker News Reader

The biggest problem I see with these global addressing schemes is that they have nothing to do with the location, and they dont have any locality. Snake.Dog.Rabbit is in a location with no snakes, dogs or rabbits and is right next to Lamp.Chair.Guitar? Theres no visible logic to it. its just easier to say 123 River Road. By the name you know its likely to be near a river, and it will be right next to 124 River Road

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But how many street names are actually related to the local geography? At least where I live - an old European country -, they're either based on the name of a more-or-less obscure dead personality (e.g. my street is named after a marquis from the 16th century) or after something that happened there decades or centuries ago (e.g. Merchants' street).

In Phoenix, Arizona the major streets vaguely relate to the location. The layout is a big grid (for the most part). The north-south streets are numbers and east-west streets are named (you need to memorize the order). There is a central avenue with street numbers increasing both east and west. "Avenues" are on the west side and "Streets" are on the east. Given the major cross streets it's pretty easy to find your way there.

I believe many Utah cities are more extreme than this with a grid and all street names being a number + a direction.

You're right though. These are the exception and not the rule.

There is no logic to the system, the only purpose it serves that I can tell is to make the owner wealthy by selling squares on a grid.

It makes me think of the million pixel homepage:

http://www.milliondollarhomepage.com/

In concept it's the same model, but for a map.

Some users have asked to give an additional name to a square so we have allowed them to. However the 3 word system is being integrated into systems where data connections can't be guaranteed, as it is algorithmic, it's only 5MB big which can fit on a smartphone and display/receive 3 words, regardless of whether the user is connected. Available for any devs to use as an offline SDK. Error-detection and voice input are also optimised for the 3 word system. I would focus on the 3 word system.

That's true when the street address works. But in a lot of the world, street addressing is poor and occasionally non-existent. Also even in countries where street addressing works well, big areas (parks, beaches, stadium entrances, car park entrances) don't have street addresses and another simple referencing system can be helpful. what3words is a human-friendly version of GPS co-ordinates which are too long and impractical for everyday use by human beings.

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