README.md

In barryrowlingson/what3wordr: Access the What3Words API

what3wordr

An old interface to the What3Words API.

Probably obsolete now as w3w have done some major changes. You might want to try Richard Cotton's package instead: https://bitbucket.org/richierocks/w3wr

> require(what3wordr)
> options(what3wordsAPIKEY="1Q2W3E4R") # insert your key here
> # xy to 3words
> position_to_w3w(c(51.51257,-0.134879))
[1] "stud.fingernails.chill"
> # oneword to locations
> w3w_to_position("*libertytech")
         x         y
1 51.51257 -0.144879
> # 3words to location
> w3w_to_position("stud.fingernails.chill")
         x         y
1 51.51257 -0.134864

Installation: use devtools. That's all your getting at the moment, this is wizard-only territory at the moment.

Here's the patent.

Personal Thoughts

This is a lovely idea, sadly proprietary which makes widespread adoption in some circles difficult. An open scheme for this sort of encoding, freely available, would be amazing but probably impossible due to the patent process.

The company are also pushing their "1word" thing as an income generator. This lets you buy a single word for your location. Again, they would be a sole provider of this service, with total control. But something like this service already exists...

IP names can be bought and sold by many providers, so there is a market, and if one registrar goes belly up you move your IP name registration elsewhere. And IP names can not only have IP numbers assigned, they can have locations, via DNS LOC records. So I could easily take my barry.rowlingson.com IP name and add location metadata to the DNS entry for it. Instead of buying a 1word from what3words, my location could be taken from that. I'm then free to update my location.

Note this doesn't affect the what3words system, which is essentially a coordinate reference system over the whole globe.

barryrowlingson/what3wordr documentation built on May 11, 2019, 8:31 p.m.