Is the What3words App any good?

[Cave_Troll]

OS locate gives you UK Grid or Lat / long
next verison with also aparently have W?W

If you have a compass on your phone it will simulate a silva compass, use the camera to make the phone see through and allow you to swivel the bezel to set a bearing.

 

[snoboy]

If the person has a phone and service, you can use this to get their location:

https://bluetoque.ca/products/yourlo-cation/

You just send them a text, they visit the link embedded, and you get their location. It prompts them to turn on the phone's GPS if needed. No transcription errors, no app install required.

 

[Jenny P]

I can recall a situation where what3words would have been immensely helpful if the Ambulance Service had been using it in the Peak District.

We had a very serious medical emergency at our Club Cottage in the Peak District.  The Cottage is reached by a half-mile track directly from a main road but it can't be seen from the road and we are one of 4 isolated buildings in the area which share the same post code but are reached by lengthy tracks from 3 different roads.  The Ambulance Service insisted that they required a post code, although we explained why it would not help them; we described the location of the entrance to the track from the main road and gave them the correct grid reference for this point.  They insisted that they did not use grid references, only post codes.  There was a 2-hour delay before they finally reached us, even though we had sent someone up to the main road to flag down the ambulance when it came.  If they had been using what3words we could have given the location of the track entrance and of the Club Cottage and the Ambulance might have reached us that much quicker.

We have since checked and find that the local Ambulance Services do not use it, although the Police are considering it at present.  It doesn't require us to have the app on a mobile phone, as long as we can quote the location to emergency services if needed and they are using it.

 

[mrodoc]

A certain amount of ageism and intellectual snobbery seems to have crept into this thread. We are leaving in an era of accelerated developments in technology and this is leaving many people behind who are not necessarily unintelligent. It cuts both ways. I was recently asked for GPS positions of caves I had visited in Morocco nearly 40 years ago. I had to point out that the system was only a glimmer in a techie's eye at the time!

 

[Tommy]

A certain amount of ageism and intellectual snobbery seems to have crept into this thread. We are leaving in an era of accelerated developments in technology and this is leaving many people behind who are not necessarily unintelligent. It cuts both ways. I was recently asked for GPS positions of caves I had visited in Morocco nearly 40 years ago. I had to point out that the system was only a glimmer in a techie's eye at the time!

While the GPS hardware in space may be of modern creation, the concept of a latitude and longitude has been in development and understood for quite some time with the Phoenicians and Polynesians using "old timey" heavenly bodies aka stars to determine global position/lat-long.

GPS is just a refinement that automates this, improves accuracy, and adds altitude relative to some mean spherical interpretation of the earth surface.

GPS is just what3numbers, lat/long/alt...

 

[ZombieCake]

I wonder if it could be used pro-actively?  That is, if you know you are going to be in certain locations, you write the three words down beforehand.  So if there is a problem you what to say in advance, and would eliminate the phone signal issue (unless that's all you have).  May help people to zone in and validate other methods.  Proper planning and all that.
I take it everyone also knows off hand the lat/long and grid refs of everywhere they need to be as well......
Some sort of technology will be needed to communicate, whether cell phone , CB radio, or Mk1 whistle or morse code. Out of line of sight anything helps.