
Mapcode – A short address for any location on Earth - beseku
http://www.mapcode.com
======
jxf
I'm a little confused about what this replaces, but it's definitely _not_
postcodes.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

* 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.

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.

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.).

~~~
Alupis
Their own website is displaying/using MapCode's incorrectly.

For example, they have 0C.T4 and they say it's in Ireland and appears to be
some bench in the picture.

However, if you use that MapCode, you will see it's the middle of some river
in Amsterdam.

0C.T4 == 52.369764, 4.868898

Another:

81.J4W They seem to claim it's in Alaska, appears to be some road. However,
it's another river in Amsterdam.

81.J4W == 52.508957, 4.769173

~~~
lstamour
Actually it's that those MapCodes are incomplete. They're missing the
country/state designation. If you look up "Ireland 0C.T4" or "US-AK 0C.T4" you
should get the correct results.

I'll cite a .doc file here, it's also available on the Developers page:

> 1\. Codes only need to be accurate enough for public, every-day use. At the
> human scale, when you are within a few meters of a destination, you are
> “there”.

> 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. For example, every location in
> The Netherlands can be uniquely specified with at most 6 letters . Even in a
> large country like India, at most 7 letters are needed.

> 6\. Short codes are reserved for areas where the population density is high.
> For example, every locations in The Netherlands can be represented by a
> unique 6-letter mapcode. However, the majority of the population is
> concentrated in a dozen urban areas totaling less than 3,000 km2 (1,800
> square miles). By reserving the 5-letter mapcodes for these areas, half the
> population of The Netherlands can be found using 5-letter codes. On average,
> mapcodes for relevant locations in The Netherlands are thus closer to 5
> letters than to 6 letters. In fact, a significant percentage of the
> population can be found in 100 km2 of city centers, which can be covered by
> 4-letter mapcodes.

> Based on these ideas, we envisaged a system that would work anywhere on
> Earth, and would (on average) provide the shortest possible codes to
> everybody. By using massive amounts of data gathered over the past 30 years
> by mapping company Tele Atlas (merged into the TomTom Group in 2008), a data
> table was constructed ...

> Finally, on top of any and all national mapcodes a location may have, it
> also always has a 9-letter, context-less map code.

> To understand mapcode accuracy, you need to understand that a specific
> mapcode defines a specific location X, but represents all the locations
> within a certain distance meters of X. For example, the Dutch mapcode
> “49.4V” decodes into coordinate 52.376514, 4.908542. This does not only mean
> that coordinate 52.376514,4.908542 can be represented by mapcode 49.4V, but
> that all coordinates within roughly 5 meters of that coordinate can also be
> represented by mapcode 49.4V.

(it continues to describe "high-precision mapcodes")

Why did they make it?

> The mapcode system was revived and worked out in 2006 when TomTom decided to
> expand their operations to countries like India and China. It was difficult
> to sell navigation devices in these countries, among other things because a
> significant part of the population lives without address, lacking not just
> house numbers but often even street names, which often made it hard or even
> impossible to enter a destination. It was thought that the introduction of a
> simple and ubiquitous system for representing locations (and hence
> destinations) would in due time make navigation devices as welcome there as
> anywhere else.

~~~
cabalamat
> Actually it's that those MapCodes are incomplete. They're missing the
> country/state designation. If you look up "Ireland 0C.T4" or "US-AK 0C.T4"
> you should get the correct results.

Imagine if a URL resolved to different addresses in each country you were in.
Would that be a better system than what we have now, or a worse one? I think
it would self-evidently be worse.

I'm surprised they didn't make mapcodes a globally-unique identifier.

~~~
cwp
Globally-unique identifiers make sense on the web, where "going" to a website
being served from the other side of the world is as easy as one served from
across the street.

That's not true for navigation in the physical world. If you're sitting in
Nebraska, how often do you have to navigate to a location in Mongolia?
Approximately never! Map codes are optimized for the common case, where you
want to go to a location that's nearby.

In fact, it's even more clever than that, since it defines "nearby" as a
political unit. Borders may be artificial, but they're real, and crossing them
has practical implications. If you're planning to buy something in another
jurisdiction, there might be tax implications. You may need your passport to
cross the border. You may not speak the language of that area. All of this
means that having the political unit as a human-readable part of the map code
is useful.

Finally, consider that some URLs _do_ resolve differently depending on where
you are. They're called relative URLs. They're very handy and very common. I'd
guess that the vast majority of URLs on the web are relative. MapCodes work
the same way. The code "Ireland 0C.T4" _is_ globally unique. If you're already
in Ireland, you can omit the territory, much as you would omit the country
when inviting a friend to your house for dinner.

For cases where you really do have to travel to the other side of the planet,
is it really so onerous to specify "Mongolia 0C.t4"?

------
sinak
The TomTom founders definitely didn't "just kill the postcode."

> 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.

Can we get an update to the click-baity title?

~~~
coin
GPS was always available for civilian use since day one. Perhaps they meant
when GPS's Selective Availability (degregration of accuracy civilians) was
turned off, which was in 2000.

------
lucb1e
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.

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.

I know it's meant to replace postal codes and not coordinates, but I'd like to
see something that actually represents a _place_ instead of an arbitrarily
shaped region. OpenStreetMap's homepage happens to do this for their short
URLs: [http://osm.org/go/0GFeWn2RJ](http://osm.org/go/0GFeWn2RJ)

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.

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.

~~~
microcolonel
Mapcodes are coordinates within a rectangular region, you define the region,
then the code(or if you're IN the region, you don't need to worry about
defining it).

One of the available regions is "Earth", which offers global
coordinates(they're a bit longer, four or five characters on each side of the
dot).

The upside of this is that it is possible to implement it completely offline,
you don't need to query the regions from a database, because they're already
defined. You just run the algorithm to project the local coordinates onto
global coordinates, and your GPS system will handle that.

~~~
grey-area
_One of the available regions is "Earth", which offers global
coordinates(they're a bit longer, four or five characters on each side of the
dot)._

Why not just use lat, lon, which can be shorter too?

Central park, NY - 40.78 -73.97

Hyde Park, LON - 51.51, -0.17

~~~
microcolonel
Those coordinates are obviously less accurate than the mapcode, and not at all
any smaller.

------
grey-area
Objections:

1\. This mapcode is country specific (!)

2\. Many locations need altitude or fine lat,lon differences to differentiate
them (e.g. blocks of flats, offices).

3\. What's wrong with altitude, lat and lon on a given projection which can be
as precise/imprecise as you want?

IMO it'd be better to have a hash of lat,lon,altitude which was globally
unique for each level of precision.

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.

~~~
jisaacso
There exists a hash of lat, long globally unique for each level of precision,
a geohash [1]. One common application utilizes a space filling Hilbert curve
to define an arbitrary precision bounding box around a set of coordinates. You
can see an example hash [2].

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash)
[2] [http://geohash.org/9q8yyvfekk8h](http://geohash.org/9q8yyvfekk8h)

~~~
javadocmd
If you'll pardon the reckless self-promotion, there's a few Java
implementations to do Geohash calculations:
[https://code.google.com/p/simplelatlng/](https://code.google.com/p/simplelatlng/)

------
drsintoma
So what's the upside of this vs Geohash?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geohash)

~~~
hnha
patents and ambiguity where you have to also mention the country and
sometimes, but just sometimes, the state.

------
Shish2k
> 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

Nope.jpg

~~~
mseebach
From the docs:

"[This] issue should be prevented at all costs. The second [adding new
countries] may be necessitated by changes to the world order, i.e. new
countries coming into being. But unless changes are made by a single central
authority, the first issue will quickly come to be."

------
davexunit
I don't like this. From what little I have read, mapcodes appear to be
proprietary, despite advertising a "free, open standard".

>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

Why can't someone charge money for a service that generates mapcodes?

>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.

I think this means that the source code they are distributing is proprietary,
because we cannot use it for any purpose.

~~~
cwp
There's quite a bit of territory between "proprietary" and "free software, as
approved by the FSF". If the MapCode sources are free for any purpose except
confusing people, I'm fine with that.

------
xbryanx
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?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_coordinate_system)

------
hds
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?

Speaking of current events, do Isreal and Palestine have separate MapCodes and
what happens when borders shift?

------
frankus
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.

~~~
frankus
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.

------
basicallydan
No, they didn't. They "killed" parts of addresses.

Also, these are still hard to remember. Personally, I'm a fan of
[http://what3words.com/](http://what3words.com/)

I'm currently here:
[http://w3w.co/lives.fend.spent](http://w3w.co/lives.fend.spent)

~~~
chippy
I like what3words also.

What I'd really like is a hierarchy so that given

>lives.fend.spent

when you saw the words

>lives.fend.rabbi

you knew it was nearby, within the "fend" place or that

>lives.gopher.spoon

was within the "lives" places

~~~
hnha
Sounds like usa.newyork.brooklyn would be a smart extension. Quick, let me
patent it and trademark the term "3 or more words that describe a location in
hierarchical order". Or maybe I will just call it "backwaddress". :P

------
linker3000
I started work on something pretty much like this about 5 years ago but never
pursued it for various reasons.

I still have one of the registered domains with nothing to show for my
preliminary work: www.tinynav.co.uk

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.

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!

~~~
brokenrhino
That sounds really great. I like the time limited parts. Things like concerts
or art fairs always much up foursquare locations.

------
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.

------
callesgg
My first instinct was: bad idea.

But then when I thought about it is actualy something that has troubled my
quite some times.

Lat and longitudes are perfectly fine but in general they are to "simple" for
people to use.

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.

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.

------
jimktrains2
There is still a special place in my heart for UTM [0].

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]

There is nothing to stop us from creating shorter UTM Codes, though.

Assume 0->33 represented by

    
    
        0         0         0         0
        ABCDEFGHJKLMNPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789
    

Same as Map Codes [2]

The CN Tower is at

* WGS84: 43°38′33.24″N 79°23′13.7″W, (26 chars)

* UTM: 17N 630084 4833438 (18 chars)

* "Shortened" UTM: T.N.SBB6.DW9F8 (13 chars)

* Map Code: CAN PYLK.XY8P [3] (13 chars)

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.

[0]:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_c...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Transverse_Mercator_coordinate_system)

[1]:
[http://www.mapcode.com/mapcode_documentation.doc](http://www.mapcode.com/mapcode_documentation.doc)

[2]:
[http://www.mapcode.com/alphabets.html](http://www.mapcode.com/alphabets.html)

[3]:
[http://www.mapcode.com/getcoords.html?iso3=112&ifrom=aboutmc](http://www.mapcode.com/getcoords.html?iso3=112&ifrom=aboutmc)

~~~
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.

------
deltaqueue
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.

Slightly off topic, but I'm stupefied at how much faster TomTom's maps (and
Bing, apparently!) are than GoogleMaps.

------
tonymillion
I hereby invoke Betteridge's law of headlines.

(unless they can convince every postal service in the world to throw away
hundreds of years of dogma)

------
cabalamat
> Areas claimed by two countries are simply included in both contexts.

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.

If so, this is a potential can of worms that many people won't want to open.

------
ekidd
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.)

Developer downloads here:
[http://www.mapcode.com/downloads.html?iso3=112&mapcode=49.4V](http://www.mapcode.com/downloads.html?iso3=112&mapcode=49.4V)

This is patented, with an ISO standard in progress, and the following
licensing terms (from their developer page):

    
    
        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.
    

Part of the motivation is the lack of usable postcodes in many countries:

 _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._

They play some interesting tricks with population density and country
"contexts" to shorten codes:

 _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._

 _6\. Short codes are reserved for areas where the population density is
high._

~~~
ff7c11
They call it

    
    
      ...a free, open way to make every house ...
    

and then they say

    
    
      The mapcode algorithms and data tables may not be
      altered in any way
    

not very open

------
ascorbic
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.

------
tinco
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?

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.

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.

Or am I missing some other fundamental property of postcodes?

~~~
orbifold
I think that postcodes divide a country not evenly but are chosen by
population density and the distribution structure of the post provider. Look
at
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Karte_Bri...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8e/Karte_Briefzentren_Deutsche_Post_AG.png)
for example, each distribution center is responsible for one or two double
digit prefixes, the first digit roughly indicates the region. Areas with high
population density have a much finer coverage. I don't think there would be
any benefit from switching to Map Codes, as they have to be mapped to
something like post codes anyways and they are not precise enough to serve as
residential addresses.

------
axyjo
No. They serve entirely different purposes.

~~~
Zikes
Yep, if this were feasible as a postcode then we'd have switched to lat/long
addresses ages ago.

------
vjvj
There is already a service like this that uses 3 words instead of that weird
string: [http://what3words.com](http://what3words.com)

~~~
kordless
Come find me at premium.gravely.pies.

------
NicoJuicy
Wouldn't this change the entire address and number? The problem is, you can't
find a place without a GPS (or another digital device) :-(

~~~
contingencies
You are correct. This is the real problem. (They even use an Indian business
card as an example...)

------
gkoz
The choice of Cyrillic translations seems arbitrary to me. There is a well
known Morse code convention (Q=Щ, V=Ж, W=В, X=Ь, Y=Ы).

~~~
blahedo
The problem with e.g. W=В or X=Ь is that they want glyph matching; so the
roman alphabet B and the cyrillic alphabet В (even though they are different
letters) map to each other, to avoid having same-looking codes map to
different locations. They're solving a slightly different problem than the
Morse convention was trying to solve.

------
giergirey
Another interesting similar idea -
[http://what3words.com/](http://what3words.com/) .

------
codeduck

      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.
    

So what happens if you live in a multi-story block of flats?

~~~
bitJericho
I think this is to improve on postal codes, not address multiple-person
dwellings. The flat/apt/suite number would take care of that.

------
n0body
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.

I do know that in belgium they point to an area, so they're not as good as a
navigation aid.

~~~
xxxmadraxxx
I live in quite a big block of maisonettes. At the maximum map zoom level,
trying to pin down the exact location of my particular house gave me about
three options to choose from –just by moving the cursor a few mm in any
direction. So what happens then? Do I pick the mapcode I like best? Does some
central body decide which is my 'official' mapcode?

Living in the UK, I don't see what this offers over my postcode, which
identifies my location to within a couple of houses. The houses across the
street have a different postcode to me as do my neighbours three doors away.
Theoretically* all anyone needs to find me is my house number and postcode.
Try it. Send me a postcard:

madra 84A <\----- house no. M15 6FD <\----- postcode England

*Actually, it's not theoretical. I have as an experiment in the past sent someone a letter addressed just to their house number and postcode and it got there. In spite of that I do tend to write out fuller addresses though. It just seems a bit too 'minimalist' relying on only the postcode.

------
Omni5cience
I'm reminded of [http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/).

~~~
coder23
Or the artificial Swatch time, which doesn't solve anything. We already have
an international time, Coordinated Universal Time. It only takes to know your
offset and some basic addition to convert.

Converting longitude and latitude to some other character base, like someone
suggested would be better.

------
fixermark
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.

Open Street Map is, sadly, no better, thinking my house is a different
neighbor's house.

~~~
maxerickson
If OpenStreetMap being wrong really bothers you, you can fix it. I mean to
point that out in an abstract sense more than I mean to implore you to do so.

As a rule, address data in OSM is very incomplete and the Nominatim instance
on osm.org falls back to things like TIGER data to do geocoding. If you are in
a region where there are a lot of addresses present in the OSM data, it would
be great if you could at least drop a note nearby stating that the addresses
in the area have problems (it's the button shaped like a cartoon word balloon,
on the right hand side of the page).

(Housenumbers show up when zoomed in, if they aren't showing, then the
OpenStreetMap website is showing you results based on some fallback data.)

~~~
easytiger
Bearing in mind that google paid people to sit at a desk adjusting house
addresses to point at actual houses correctly before they recently invented
their machine learning brain thing

~~~
maxerickson
Maybe in many places. Or maybe for some uses. Around here, Google Maps has a
block level understanding of addresses and just shows a calculated point for a
given house number (you can feed in non houses and it shows them down the
street from real addresses).

My understanding is that they have acquired building data from many
municipalities and will absolutely use that when they have it, not that they
have spent a lot of time refining it.

------
viraptor
> What is a mapcode? [...] They are precise to a few meters, which is good
> enough for every-day use.

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.

------
pgt
[https://www.waytag.com/](https://www.waytag.com/) 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.

------
wspeirs
I guess today is the day for talking about encoding locations on earth on HN:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053032](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8053032)

------
crazy1van
The associated patent application:
[http://www.google.com/patents/WO2013057221A1?cl=en](http://www.google.com/patents/WO2013057221A1?cl=en)

~~~
cabalamat
According to
<[http://www.mapcode.com/downloads.html>](http://www.mapcode.com/downloads.html>):

> The mapcode system is a free, open standard.

Which is it, open or patent-encumbered? It can't be both.

------
sneak
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.

------
fredsmith219
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.

------
jgrahamc
Similar idea:
[http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/1010-code.html](http://blog.jgc.org/2010/06/1010-code.html)

~~~
micheljansen
Nice idea to include a check digit. Mapcode doesn't have that (though they
recommend specifying the country separately). On the other hand, with only 4
characters, Mapcode should be easy enough to remember.

------
qwerta
ZIP code is also used in astronomy:
[http://healpix.sourceforge.net/](http://healpix.sourceforge.net/)

------
alixaxel
Seems very similar to the NAC:
[http://www.nacgeo.com/nacsite/](http://www.nacgeo.com/nacsite/)

------
spilk
why not use already-established grid systems instead of making a new one? MGRS
is commonly used in the US military and does the same thing.

------
tzaman
Seems similar to Naymit: [http://www.naymit.com/](http://www.naymit.com/)

------
PaulHoule
It doesn't replace the post code by any means, but it's definitely a nice way
to program a GPS.

------
spountzy
A lot to do about their map design. But it is quite quick in finding
locations.

------
ing33k
startup based on similar idea ( Based in Hyderabad / India )
[http://zip.pr/](http://zip.pr/)

------
paul_f
What problem does this solve, exactly?

~~~
lstamour
From their reference doc:

> The mapcode system was revived and worked out in 2006 when TomTom decided to
> expand their operations to countries like India and China. It was difficult
> to sell navigation devices in these countries, among other things because a
> significant part of the population lives without address, lacking not just
> house numbers but often even street names, which often made it hard or even
> impossible to enter a destination. It was thought that the introduction of a
> simple and ubiquitous system for representing locations (and hence
> destinations) would in due time make navigation devices as welcome there as
> anywhere else.

------
nakedrobot2
No.

------
hawleyal
Terrible site design

------
beseku
Subtitle taken from [http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10975625/Did-
TomT...](http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/10975625/Did-TomTom-just-
kill-the-postcode.html)

~~~
dang
It's against the HN guidelines to editorialize in titles, even when the
editorialization was done by somebody else.

This one was particularly bad because the submitted title ("Did TomTom
founders just kill the postcode?") caused the post to receive a barrage of
user flags.

