Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by bhawks 1846 days ago
None. Lat longs usability isn't the best (people don't like long numbers). But it's failure mode won't send you to Vietnam when you meant a public park in the UK. even if this system is constrained with simple, short, not confusable words (which would entail shrinking the earth or lowering the resolution) the fact that addresses are randomly assigned extremely reduces it's utility. Can you look at 2 addresses and know immediately where they are in relation to each other? Not the best tool for most map problems.
1 comments

Getting sent 1km or even 100m away by accident could be critical depending on the geography. The closeness of the numbers increases that possibility. And an error that reports Vietnam is easy to coorrect.
Easy to recognise. I'm not sure the emergency services having to play a process-of-elimination word game is 'easy to correct'.
The app I have used makes it very clear. It autocompletes options as you type with a little flag. It is worth trying out if you have never used it.