Three Words – Any Place

Here’s an amazing new tool. what3words has identified every one of the 57 trillion 3mx3m squares on the entire planet with just three, easy to remember, words. My office, for example, not my building but my office, is token.oyster.whispering. Tyler’s office just down the hall is barons.huts.sneaky. (Especially easy to remember if you recall this is Tyrone’s office as well.)

Every location on the earth now has a fixed, easily-accessible and memorable address. Unpopulated places have addresses for the first time ever, of course, but now so do heavily populated places like favelas in Brazil where there are no roads or numbered houses. In principle, addressing could be done with latitude and longitude but that’s like trying to direct people to web sites with IP addresses–not good for humans.

Algorithms have assigned words to avoid homophones (sale & sail) and to place similar combos far from one another to aid in error detection. Simpler, more common words are used to address more populated areas and longer words are used in unpopulated areas.

Moreover the three word addresses are available not just in English but in French, Spanish, Portuguese, Swahili, Russian, German, Turkish and Swedish with more languages on the way. The addresses in other languages are not translations but unique 3 word addresses in those languages.

All of this is available in a small app so that it can be used even offline on a simple smartphone. Find your address here.

Hat tip: The Browser.