Anyone using the App What3words on the Mt?

[James]

I'd never even heard of it. Basically it divides the earth into 3m x 3m squares then assigns 3 words to the spot. So you can communicate your position with just three words. Brilliant.

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What3words: The app that can save your life
By Duncan Leatherdale
BBC News. 15 August 2019

...

Kicked. Converged. Soccer.

These three randomly chosen words saved Jess Tinsley and her friends after they got lost in a forest on a dark, wet night.
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Saved in that instance is a bit of a stretch, but it's pretty cool. It's just a lot easier then a string of numbers.

 

[Jenny]

Never heard of it until now but very cool!

 

[James]

Yeah it might even be Gathering resistant for herding the cats. Most of them probably remember Mad Libs. Now they can tell us where they are by playing word games.

Surely @dbostedo will "require" suggest it for the Gathering attendees?

 

[mdf]

Yeah it might even be Gathering resistant for herding the cats. Most of them probably remember Mad Libs. Now they can tell us where they are by playing word games.

Surely @dbostedo will "require" suggest it for the Gathering attendees?

One recent Gathering (Utah maybe -- I forget) a bunch of us enabled "share my location" on Google maps. It was actually pretty handy -- it improved your odds of actually finding someone on the hill (via the usual not-noticed text messages and phone calls to voice mail) from NFW to "if you are lucky."

 

[dbostedo]

Yeah it might even be Gathering resistant for herding the cats. Most of them probably remember Mad Libs. Now they can tell us where they are by playing word games.

Surely @dbostedo will "require" suggest it for the Gathering attendees?

Maybe... but I'd prefer something more like @mdf mentioned where you can see where others are on the mountain. I checked the Jackson Hole app, and it doesn't seem to have that feature.

 

[Tricia]

So many apps work for tracking friends these days

 

[James]

Just because you know where the cats are doesn’t mean they’re going to do what you want them to.

 

[dbostedo]

So many apps work for tracking friends these days

Sure... but having everyone on the same one - regardless of iPhone or Android - could be a challenge.

 

[KingGrump]

Some of us rather be lost.

 

[Tricia]

Some of us rather be lost.

I was just going to say something like this.
There are times in the middle of a gathering that I need to hide and breathe.

 

[KingGrump]

There are times in the middle of a gathering that I need to hide and breathe.

That is why I like bump runs.
Sometimes it take more than one pass to get the job done.

 

[scott43]

Going to change the lives of a lot of college kids on a pub crawl....

 

[James]

Going to change the lives of a lot of college kids on a pub crawl....

It started from the guy being with bands and the confusion over the right entrances to go in.

 

[raytseng]

I've listened to a few podcasts on this, but I never really bought into the usefulness of this.

The greatest benefit of the solution seems to be in the scenario where you are somewhat limited to Voice contact but no Data; so a human has to communicate their position by saying words.

With your friends, if you have access both voice and data, it seems easier just to use share your location electronically just by using the share location button or equivilant in whatever app you like to use, it doesn't matter that your location is a 16digit stream of numbers or 3 words; if you just press a button to share either way.

In many mountains, it seems to me like the useful scenario I outlined above doesn't seem to be true, you either have absolutely no signal or an intermittent signal at the peaks so voice synchronous communication is not really taking place. Then at the bases or lodges, you get free wifi to have data but potentially still no voice. So Text/Data-based asynchronous communication seems to work better based on the fact that it'll queue up the message and push the delivery when the party gets signal, and in that case you might as well just push the GPS coords instead of 3words.

I suppose if you're dealing with Emergency or a callcenter where you only have Voice; and you can't text them anything then it's useful, but that is more of a criticism on the sad state of affairs that emergency services have not yet figured out text or electronic as a universally available communication channel.

 

[headybrew]

No but I have the text below in my email signature

Freedom is tempting.radical.insecurity