[Yardlink]

If you use CAN-ON it's only 12 chars. But if you already know you're in Ontario it's only 5 including the dot.

So that makes the difference between saying it to someone and having to write it down. Mapcode is massively shorter for local locations which is exactly what sat-nav is for.

The "grids" for mapcode are human-understandable - country and state.

I think a lot of HNers are thinking too much like programmers and forgetting that people need to tell each other locations and write them down. That's where mapcode is good.