Being Mum - What3words

A few issues ago I was writing about phone apps that can be a potential problem for your kids. However there is a new app on the block that may save your, or your children’s, life.

I first heard about What3words on QI a couple of years ago. The panel were somewhat dismissive while poor Sandi Toksvig was trying to explain how brilliant it was. The show moved on.

Since then though, the British company behind the idea have developed and it had recently been taken up by the West Yorkshire Police Service as a way to EXACTLY locate the person needing help.

Put simply, the whole surface of the earth, including the entire ocean, has been divided into 57 trillion 3m x 3m squares. Each one of those squares has an address that consists of just 3, apparently random, words and just 40,000 words are required to assign each square a different address. Of course this has been done by a magic algorithm I can’t even begin to understand, but the three words are chosen to be phonetically different and, if there is a possible confusion, the similar named square will be so far away that any uncertainty is negated. For example, the centre of the roundabout in Todmorden is “lows, shout, backpacks” and Hebden Bridge Town Hall entrance is “went, troubles, wiggling”. The advantages that what3words claim over the traditional coordinate system are memorability, errordetection, providing addresses where no streets exist, high levels of specificity and voice input.

So far seven emergency services across the country have taken up the service, including West Yorkshire Police, and it has already been used to save lives. Cases include the rescue of a victim of sexual assault who was being held hostage, and the capture of the offender, a member

of the public used it to locate a remote riverside path where she had found a lost child and a mother and child were rescued after a car crash in a very remote location.

So the app - search for ‘what3words’ - is quite small so should fit comfortably on a modern smart phone. The majority of the memory it takes up is the algorithm, meaning (and this is the critical thing) it will be able to locate your position and hence your 3 word address, without an internet location. It uses the GPS signal, so may be a little slower, but is just as accurate.

The main home screen of the app is a map (from Google maps) with an option to turn on the satellite view. It knows where you are and will display your three word location. There is also a clear link to share that information with whoever needs to know - your guests who can’t find your house, your family who are trying to catch you up on a trek across the moors, the police, etc. - via any messenger services you have installed.

Of course, it also works in the opposite direction. Someone can send you a three word position so you can pinpoint their location and get directions to it, using Google maps (you will need a data connection for this to work) and/or a compass (works offline). You can also input the three words by talking to the app.

So this is an app I can recommend; and get all the family involved. Next time you are working as parent taxi service and have no idea where your children’s friends live, next time you head out for a walk across the moors with the dog, next time your child heads up to Gaddings dam with a bunch of mates, no one should ever be lost again.

Screen shot showing the what3word location for Gaddings Dam