Foxhound5366
Honorary Master
Ok ok I exaggerate, I can't say they stole it - although I DID send an early proposal by Gmail a few years back - but some smart people came up with almost exactly the same system I'd thought up a while ago and just couldn't take further at the time than a proposal and in-person pitch meeting to a business exec.
Here's a news story introducing Open Location Codes
Here's the GitHub open source info
Here's the website that gives you the codes
It's pretty awesome to see the system developed and working just as well as I'd envisioned it, open source, and it even works in Google Maps now
Too bad it never made me bajillions, but I'd always known the only way it would succeed is without any limitations to its diffusion and then charging for bolt-on features.
PS: Just coz some people will swear that I never could have thought this up, here are three screencaps extracted (not sequentially) from the original proposal I sent to the exec that resulted in the meeting ... this was back in March 2013.
Compare that to this explanation from the Plus.Codes website above:
Close enough for rock n roll, if you ask me.
PS: Yeah, after my proposal I realised that the alphabet was more efficient for this system than numbers, because each letter (A-Z) has 26 possible alternatives, while each digit (0-9) has only 10 possible alternatives (i.e. you get more granularity with the same number of characters if you use the alphabet). Turns out the guys who eventually developed the system recognised that too, good for em.
Here's a news story introducing Open Location Codes
Here's the GitHub open source info
Here's the website that gives you the codes
It's pretty awesome to see the system developed and working just as well as I'd envisioned it, open source, and it even works in Google Maps now
Too bad it never made me bajillions, but I'd always known the only way it would succeed is without any limitations to its diffusion and then charging for bolt-on features.PS: Just coz some people will swear that I never could have thought this up, here are three screencaps extracted (not sequentially) from the original proposal I sent to the exec that resulted in the meeting ... this was back in March 2013.
Compare that to this explanation from the Plus.Codes website above:
Close enough for rock n roll, if you ask me.
PS: Yeah, after my proposal I realised that the alphabet was more efficient for this system than numbers, because each letter (A-Z) has 26 possible alternatives, while each digit (0-9) has only 10 possible alternatives (i.e. you get more granularity with the same number of characters if you use the alphabet). Turns out the guys who eventually developed the system recognised that too, good for em.
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