[diydsp]

" A short address for any location on Earth"

It doesn't check out:

Surface Area of Earth: 510.1 * 10^6 km^2

Distinct map codes: 36^5 = 60.466176 * 10 ^6

Area of 1 map code = 8.4 km^2

Oh! It's narrowed by country... so it doesn't address any location on Earth. Only populated areas.

If you want to actually 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 truthfully refers to any location on Earth.

[pilsetnieks]

It is actually every area, and the length of the codes varies. I'm guessing that the most popular/populated places get the shortest codes and those further away get the longer codes.

For example a location somewhere in the Atlantic off the coast of Gran Canaria is International QFLQV.29KM while some place in the el Poble Sec district in Barcelona is Spain SG.YB.

[abruzzi]

Its technically called the "Maidenhead Locater" and the specific format can be seen on the wikipedia page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidenhead_Locator_System