Everything is easier with a three-word address

[Kosmik]

Pity post codes aren't as specific here as they are in UK. Writing a tool isn't an option for most. Google, et al, need to do it.

True, ours is work specific though obviously.

 

[Swa]

Any system will get you only that far, but I think we can all agree that conventional addresses are:
- less accurate (a street number doesn't necessarily guide you to the entrance to use)
- more prone to being misheard (simply more information to transmit and receive by humans)
- completely unable to guide people wherever there aren't roads (or even where there are roads but no conventional road numbering - like along rural streets).

So while getting non-standard information to end-users (like photographs, text descriptions etc) will be good, I think the base addressing system still needs to be standardised for uniformity and compatibility. How about adopting a hybrid standard, where the address shortener gets you to the front door or public parking of an apartment block, and then a few letters navigate you within the building (e.g. 4FA12 -> 4th floor, apartment 12).

That may be the case but conventional addresses have gotten us this far because they are adaptable so I don't see them going anywhere. While there are other options they will always make fixed assumptions so will need supplementing with conventional addresses for outlying cases.

 

[Foxhound5366]

That may be the case but conventional addresses have gotten us this far because they are adaptable so I don't see them going anywhere. While there are other options they will always make fixed assumptions so will need supplementing with conventional addresses for outlying cases.

Dude, a lot of bad technologies were used because they're all we had up to that point, but can you think of a single use case where a conventional address is better than an address shortener with GPS-level accuracy?

You can guide people to specific entrances, or 5mx5m squares, anywhere on earth, regardless of pre-exisiting road infrastructure, with fewer characters of data than most city names (the lowest level of data in formal addressing).

Just think about that for a bit. In the same data that you'd use to tell somebody to go to Pretoria, I could guide them to the precise outside seating area at their favourite restaurant in the city.