Homer Watson and Ottawa Three Lane Roundabouts

[ijmorlan]

Still off-topic, but I could not resist...

The company what3words has tried to solve the addressing problem by dividing the word in to 57 trillion 3mx3m squares and assigned each one a unique 3 word address.

So essentially you can find any location on the globe and share it with less ambiguity than any other system (at least in the X and Y, it doesn't work on the Z axis (e.g. a tall residential tower)), including places where addresses are non-existent in other more traditional systems.

For example the firefighters' monument is at: gadget.trucked.consumed.

I guess it is just a really fine UTM grid using words instead of numbers.
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[url=http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2016/06/27/what3words_divided_the_world_into_57_trillion_squares.html]Slate article.

And proprietary as well — the conversion depends on having a copy of their database. Obviously this is completely unacceptable, unless they release the database into the public domain.

Also this is not an addressing scheme but instead a location scheme. As you point out, it’s like the UTM grid. To me an addressing scheme has to connect in some way to the structure and layout of the city. This is part of what is wrong with Edmonton’s use of a numeric grid in new subdivisions.