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by frankus 4357 days ago
I, for one, really like this.

* 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)

* 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.

* 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).

* It's super easy to read to someone over the phone, or type in from a business card, or transcribe from a sign.

A couple of uses immediately spring to mind:

* Telling an Uber/Taxi/rideshare where to pick you up when you don't have GPS/data.

* Telling a delivery drone where to deliver your package (without having to correctly remember dozens of digits of lat/long).

* And of course what it was designed for, entering a navigation location quickly.

I'm sure there are some implementation flaws, which may or may not be fatal, but I think it's pretty great.

1 comments

One more use case: When an address doesn't reliably geocode across mapping providers. I've run into this with things like campgrounds or tourist attractions in rural areas in the US and Canada, even with Google Maps but especially Apple Maps in the early days.