I'm a little confused about what this replaces, but it's definitely <i>not</i> postcodes.<p>* Postcodes have a specific meaning: they're both a geographical area and a mail delivery zone (at least in the US). Replacing one short code with another, which requires a different and less reliable third-party service to correctly decode, doesn't seem like a good idea.<p>* Latitudes and longitudes are unambiguous, well-understood, and don't require a third-party service to be online in order to correctly decode. So it doesn't seem like this can replace latitudes/longitudes, unless we're talking about shortening their representation.<p>* Broadly speaking, while addresses have a lot of problems, they're unambiguous with human context. So this doesn't seem like it really replace addresses either.<p>* For things like a loose description that might not be associated with a single point (e.g. "Central Park"), I could see mapcodes being useful -- you can provide the precise boundaries of the park, where it's located, associate metadata with the mapcode like what hours the park is open, etc. That might be very helpful.<p>Also, won't there be multiple mapcodes for a single spot and won't that require cross-association of the respective metadata? For example, consider that Central Park is also in Manhattan, also part of NYC, also in Midtown in NYC, etc.<p>I guess that's not necessarily a problem, but it could lead to a lot of expensive processing for frequently updated locations/boundaries (e.g. a beach, a suburban development in progress, etc.).
The TomTom founders definitely didn't "just kill the postcode."<p>> Mapcodes were developed in 2001 by Pieter Geelen and Harold Goddijn, soon after the GPS satellite signals were opened up for civilian use. It was decided to donate the mapcode system to the public domain in 2008.<p>Can we get an update to the click-baity title?
Honestly, I don't like it. At first I thought it was a short, sort of binary (at least machine-readable) representation of coordinates. A,A might be (0,0) in our coordinate system. Turns out it's not. It's not even global but country (or in the US, state) specific.<p>This means that the locations are controlled by a single entity together with country codes. Sure, postal codes are controlled by a single entity too, but at least they are regulated by the government using tax money instead of an arbitrary self-appointed committee.<p>I know it's meant to replace postal codes and not coordinates, but I'd like to see something that actually represents a <i>place</i> instead of an arbitrarily shaped region. OpenStreetMap's homepage happens to do this for their short URLs: <a href="http://osm.org/go/0GFeWn2RJ" rel="nofollow">http://osm.org/go/0GFeWn2RJ</a><p>Try moving on the OpenStreetMap map with the share menu opened and the short URL option selected. You'll see how it influences the short URL.<p>But anyway, back to replacing postal codes: the main advantage of this is that it'd be a universal and short code. In The Netherlands you could specify: NL 6114HT 41 and you'd have house number 41 at the Marktstraat (market street) in Susteren (city). Not much longer. And with this new system you'd still need to look up country-specific codes so I don't see much of an advantage.
Objections:<p>1. This mapcode is country specific (!)<p>2. Many locations need altitude or fine lat,lon differences to differentiate them (e.g. blocks of flats, offices).<p>3. What's wrong with altitude, lat and lon on a given projection which can be as precise/imprecise as you want?<p>IMO it'd be better to have a hash of lat,lon,altitude which was globally unique for each level of precision.<p>A system like this needs to be globally unique without specifying country, or you may as well use a postcode. The only advantage over postcodes at present is it's slightly shorter.
So what's the upside of this vs Geohash?<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash</a>
> The mapcode foundation reserves the right to change the country list and population density maps, at which point existing codes will point to different places or be invalid<p>Nope.jpg
I don't like this. From what little I have read, mapcodes appear to be proprietary, despite advertising a "free, open standard".<p>>Mapcodes are free. They can be used by anyone, and may be supported, provided or generated by anyone, as long as this is done free of charge, conditions or restrictions<p>Why can't someone charge money for a service that generates mapcodes?<p>>The mapcode algorithms and data tables may not be altered in any way that would result in the production of different (and thus incompatible) mapcodes. The mapcode algorithms and data tables may not be used in any way to generate a different system that produces codes to represent locations.<p>I think this means that the source code they are distributing is proprietary, because we cannot use it for any purpose.
This is neat, but I am confused why you wouldn't want to just tie location to geography and not country (aka nationality, a squishy and shifting idea). Why not just use UTM?<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_coordinate_system" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_...</a>
I'm curious about what happens when a geographical location changes country. If Catalunya gains independence from Spain, will the MapCode associated with my house here in Barcelona change? Will the old "Spanish" MapCode still be valid?<p>Speaking of current events, do Isreal and Palestine have separate MapCodes and what happens when borders shift?
I, for one, really like this.<p>* It doesn't use postal codes, which aren't really intended for use for anything but mail delivery and occasionally make that painfully apparent (such as when the boundaries are changed)<p>* It doesn't depend on street addresses, so it works in countries where the streets aren't reliably or intelligibly named/numbered. It also works in places where there are no streets.<p>* It's smarter about allocating code space than something like a 10:10 code, since e.g. not a lot of people live in the middle of the ocean (and they can always use a "fully-qualified" MapCode).<p>* It's super easy to read to someone over the phone, or type in from a business card, or transcribe from a sign.<p>A couple of uses immediately spring to mind:<p>* Telling an Uber/Taxi/rideshare where to pick you up when you don't have GPS/data.<p>* Telling a delivery drone where to deliver your package (without having to correctly remember dozens of digits of lat/long).<p>* And of course what it was designed for, entering a navigation location quickly.<p>I'm sure there are some implementation flaws, which may or may not be fatal, but I think it's pretty great.
No, they didn't. They "killed" parts of addresses.<p>Also, these are still hard to remember. Personally, I'm a fan of <a href="http://what3words.com/" rel="nofollow">http://what3words.com/</a><p>I'm currently here: <a href="http://w3w.co/lives.fend.spent" rel="nofollow">http://w3w.co/lives.fend.spent</a>
I started work on something pretty much like this about 5 years ago but never pursued it for various reasons.<p>I still have one of the registered domains with nothing to show for my preliminary work: www.tinynav.co.uk<p>I got as far as designing the encoding scheme, including a database of point types (house, utility pole, ancient monument, park, private event etc..), together with special codes for corporates to use for all their shops, fast food outlets etc.<p>I had the database tables worked out, populated the locations table with open source/public domain data such as civil and commercial airports and some other stuff. There was a front end that allowed for time-limited one-offs for things like 'Jo's birthday party', but then life took over!
" A short address for any location on Earth"<p>It doesn't check out:<p>Surface Area of Earth: 510.1 * 10^6 km^2<p>Distinct map codes: 36^5 = 60.466176 * 10 ^6<p>Area of 1 map code = 8.4 km^2<p>Oh! It's narrowed by country... so it doesn't address any location on Earth. Only populated areas.<p>If you want to <i>actually</i> refer to ANY location on Earth, there's another system, Ham Radio grids. It uses four to six digits and refers to either 70x100 or 3x4 miles squared. Probably useless for the business purposes, but at least it <i>truthfully</i> refers to any location on Earth.
My first instinct was: bad idea.<p>But then when I thought about it is actualy something that has troubled my quite some times.<p>Lat and longitudes are perfectly fine but in general they are to "simple" for people to use.<p>When I think of a location in the world I generally think of the country cause I know to some extent where most country's are located.<p>For example I would to describe some place in Miami I would describe it as in the lower right side of US and continue to work downwards from that.
There is still a special place in my heart for UTM [0].<p>MapCodes seem to be based on a similar concept (grid, sub grid, sub-subgrid), but with a bit shorter representation. The thing that worries me about using mapcodes, however, is what seem to be the arbitrary borders, order of girds, and the up-keep required for usage. [1]<p>There is nothing to stop us from creating shorter UTM Codes, though.<p>Assume 0->33 represented by<p><pre><code> 0 0 0 0
ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789
</code></pre>
Same as Map Codes [2]<p>The CN Tower is at<p>* WGS84: 43°38′33.24″N 79°23′13.7″W, (26 chars)<p>* UTM: 17N 630084 4833438 (18 chars)<p>* "Shortened" UTM: T.N.SBB6.DW9F8 (13 chars)<p>* Map Code: CAN PYLK.XY8P [3] (13 chars)<p>So I guess the utility of such a complex system is lost on me when something like UTM, that can be decoded with minimal effort, is just as good.<p>[0]: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_coordinate_system" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_c...</a><p>[1]: <a href="http://www.mapcode.com/mapcode_documentation.doc" rel="nofollow">http://www.mapcode.com/mapcode_documentation.doc</a><p>[2]: <a href="http://www.mapcode.com/alphabets.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.mapcode.com/alphabets.html</a><p>[3]: <a href="http://www.mapcode.com/getcoords.html?iso3=112&ifrom=aboutmc" rel="nofollow">http://www.mapcode.com/getcoords.html?iso3=112&ifrom=aboutmc</a>
Having traveled to several countries without formal addresses, this looks like a godsend for navigation. It has no regional segmentation (i.e. no drill-down reference like country-state-zip-city levels), however, so it's useless as a cultural reference.<p>Slightly off topic, but I'm stupefied at how much faster TomTom's maps (and Bing, apparently!) are than GoogleMaps.
I hereby invoke Betteridge's law of headlines.<p>(unless they can convince every postal service in the world to throw away hundreds of years of dogma)
> Areas claimed by two countries are simply included in both contexts.<p>If I understand this correctly, it means that any address in a disputed territory has multiple mapcodes, one for each claimant, and therefore whichever one you use you are implicitly backing one political claim over the others.<p>If so, this is a potential can of worms that many people won't want to open.
Overall, this looks pretty interesting, assuming your goal is to communicate physical locations with an accuracy of a couple of meters using a format that fits on a business card. It can also be used without country names, if you prefer it that way (just select "International" when generating the code.)<p>Developer downloads here: <a href="http://www.mapcode.com/downloads.html?iso3=112&mapcode=49.4V" rel="nofollow">http://www.mapcode.com/downloads.html?iso3=112&mapcode=49.4V</a><p>This is patented, with an ISO standard in progress, and the following licensing terms (from their developer page):<p><pre><code> The mapcode algorithms and data tables may not be
altered in any way that would result in the production
of different (and thus incompatible) mapcodes. The
mapcode algorithms and data tables may not be used in
any way to generate a different system that produces
codes to represent locations. In order to prevent
misuse, unauthorised alterations, copying or commercial
exploitation, please note that the ideas and algorithms
behind the mapcode system have been patented and that
the term "mapcode" is a registered trademark of the
Stichting Mapcode Foundation.
</code></pre>
Part of the motivation is the lack of usable postcodes in many countries:<p><i>Unfortunately, a large part of the world population has no address. In India alone, well over half a billion people live in houses that have no street name.</i><p>They play some interesting tricks with population density and country "contexts" to shorten codes:<p><i>4. People live within a “country context”. Addresses seldom include a country name. Unless clearly stated otherwise, they can safely be assumed to be in “this” country. Codes that are known to be within a particular territory can be designed to be much shorter.</i><p><i>6. Short codes are reserved for areas where the population density is high.</i>
No, because postcodes aren't primarily geographical references. They just happen to be really useful for that. UK postcodes are arranged so that each one handles a similar amount of mail. This means that a residential street may share one or two postcodes, but a large organisation may have several postcodes to itself.
It's hard to get an understanding of the precise algorithm that's being used to generate the code. If it were a competitor of the postcode it would have to be possible to identify whether two places are close to eachother just by looking at the code right?<p>From the patent I get the feeling that it's a bit like a C-ary space partitioning, where C is 36 (alphabet+numbers). So the first character divides the earth in 36 regions, the second character divides that region in 36 regions, and so on.<p>With that in mind, I think once people would be a bit familiar with the general numbers for regions it would be pretty easy to identify what general region a mapcode would be in. So it might be a pretty good replacement of postcodes.<p>Or am I missing some other fundamental property of postcodes?
There is already a service like this that uses 3 words instead of that weird string: <a href="http://what3words.com" rel="nofollow">http://what3words.com</a>
<p><pre><code> Mapcodes are a free, open way to make every house or location on Earth
addressable by a short code. With nothing else except your mapcode,
for instance, a navigation system will bring someone to within meters
of your front door.
</code></pre>
So what happens if you live in a multi-story block of flats?
It gave me a map code that was longer than my postcode. I'm not sure how postcodes work everywere else in the world, but in the uk they point to a specific road, so it's pretty good for navigating to a place with.<p>I do know that in belgium they point to an area, so they're not as good as a navigation aid.
It's unfortunate that their map-encoding solution appears to be based on TomTom's dataset, instead of Google Maps. It therefore thinks my house is my neighbor's house.<p>Open Street Map is, sadly, no better, thinking my house is a different neighbor's house.
> What is a mapcode? [...] They are precise to a few meters, which is good enough for every-day use.<p>Yeah, but so are the British post codes. 6-7 symbols and you're down to meters usually. At least for the cities. They definitely bring you close to the front doors.
<a href="https://www.waytag.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.waytag.com/</a> is a ZA startup that's been around for a few years. On a cursory glance, this seem quite similar? I don't think WayTag ever gained much traction.
I guess today is the day for talking about encoding locations on earth on HN: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053032" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053032</a>
There are already a dozen of these lat/lon encoding schemes. Please go support/evangelize one of the existing ones before making a fourteenth incarnation.
I'll use my mapcode to tell my friends where to meet me. I'll use swatch internet time to tell them when to meet me. It's about as useful.
Similar idea: <a href="http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/1010-code.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/1010-code.html</a>
Subtitle taken from <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10975625/Did-TomTom-just-kill-the-postcode.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10975625/Did-TomT...</a>