Horse and Hound obviously looking at it for horse riders, but will be useful for finding walkers, hikers, cyclists, etc.
"An app that can pinpoint a phone to a 3m square anywhere in the world is hoped to help emergency services reach people in rural areas.
A number of emergency services are now using the “What3Words” app in a bid to improve response times.
The app splits the world into a grid of 3m x 3m squares, each of which has a unique three-word address."
Or, if you’re like me, you don’t even have a phone.
As for the app in the story - it strikes me as a bizarre usage model to assume that a stranded rider will be able to pinpoint themselves on a map, with or without GPS, then access an app to convert it to the three words to give, by speech, to the emergency services., rather than creating an app that just finds the real GPS-based coordinates and sends them out for you.
A solution to no obvious problem, IMO.
Green Flag used triangulation to locate my car when I had a blow out on the motorway in a thunder storm back in 2002. Having said that, we were on a tour on Monday through Therisso gorge in northern Crete when the vehicle broke down. A replacement vehicle arrived within 5mins, but the guide told my OH that we were lucky because we'd only just reached an area where there was a phone signal again after 12km without signal.
GPS, on the other hand, is much more reliable in mountain areas, very rarely, IME, getting confused by reflected signals such as can easily happen in a city. Many phones now also use the Russian satellites as well as the US ones, so it's not unusual to have 15 or more in view at any one time.
As Ace1 says, when you have an emergency are you going to be able to say whatever words you're supposed to say, in the right order? Most of the words are in English. If I'm Japanese, traveling in France, am I supposed to say Japanese words or French words?
Aside from this new app, the company has been trying to partner with countries that don't currently have an addressing system (or have a poor system) to deliver the mail. Instead of 123 Main St, your address might be something like "apple.pear.pie".
Here's a wired article that talks about it:
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/what...n-china-launch
From the article:
Nope, no problem there if you have any troubles with language, right?
Not sure how much this might be used in Switzerland, but for people riding, cycling off road, hiking, walking, etc, it may help the rescue services find you much more quickly.
Huh. Did a search and nothing came up for it.