I like Open Location Coordinates AKA #olc #plusCodes as these are a compact, readable easily sharable open way to identify global coordinates.

There's 2 renderings though, a full one and a version that's abbreviated but needs a locality name.

The long one is great, the other one is useless because an app would need a massive db of placenames.

Guess which version #googleMaps gives access to...

Open Location Code

https://bocops.app/eng/2025/02/open-location-code/

Today I am wishing again for #activityPub to support location-aware communities. I'd like to see posts on maps. I'd like to talk to people in my community and neighboring areas, and follow specific locations with #OLC #plusCodes, (without having to manually expand the quad tree for large regions!)
#FediMeta

Is there any software on the #Fediverse doing this?

TIL why Google has not thrown in any support for "What 3 Words"... they have their own competing system "Plus Codes"

This turns out to be something I've looked into because I independently came up with a similar idea around 2007. Mine had five words, more fidelity, support for multiple dictionaries or language, z-axis positioning, and checksum words.

https://blog.google/around-the-globe/google-asia/how-plus-codes-helped-create-new-home-addresses-in-india/

#What3Words is a brilliant addressing system, but its key disadvantage is you need a company's permission to use it, which they only grant if you either don't use it very much (maybe?) or you pay them. #Pluscodes, on the other hand, don't have that problem, and one can figure out that 8DC9+A2 is right next to 8DC9+A3.

Ever wondered about those mysterious alphanumeric codes on #GoogleMaps? They're called Plus Codes! A simple, global addressing system that helps you pinpoint any location. Share, navigate, and explore with ease using #PlusCodes. https://maps.google.com/pluscodes/

The news writes about #OvertureMaps as a Google Maps competitor, but it also will make a free and open source Google invention more useful: Short #OLC / #PlusCodes can probably use the new datasets to fully put the black box myth to rest. (Reverse geocoding without relying on Google. Nominatim already enables this but is big and sluggish)

#DAE #DoesAnyoneElse provide something else (e.g. coordinates or #PlusCodes) than an address when ordering an Uber or Bolt? (FreeNow doesn't support #PlusCodes it seems, unfortunately)

My current address has issues with streetname and number to get to the right place, so I resorted to putting my home location as a plus code in several apps now.

I wrote a piece on Substack about some misunderstandings on #PlusCodes
Have you used them before? Do you know what they are?
https://lapingvino.substack.com/p/plus-codes-genius-design-and-untapped?sd=pf

Some time ago I tried fixing a problem the hard way and found a much easier way to do the same thing.

We are living in a world where we talk more with people on the other side of the world than people nearby.

Yet we are rightfully worried about things that give away where we are. We cannot really engage with social media that will dox us.

So I was playing around with #PlusCodes. They have this funny property that they are layered: every two digits you get a level deeper, and you can cut off the first part to have a shorter code that still tells a place in your neighborhood.

OR you cut of the last part to describe a bigger #region.

I found out that if you cut it to six digits, you get a region that is about the size of a village or a city neighborhood that is #walkable, without giving any data that actually doxes you.

I implemented this on https://whenwhere.cf (the big code at the top is your actual exact location in #PlusCode format, be careful about giving that to other people! the thing you need is the #geo something tag)

You can use this hashtag to talk about rough locations, and because it's just a hashtag, you don't need complicated stuff to figure out if stuff happens nearby to you. Also you can easily figure out the #hashtags of #neighborhoods around it.

We can probably use this together with a.gup.pe groups to do things like comment about nice nature, set up local trades and similar stuff that needs #location awareness.

Can you help me give this system a nice and memorable name, and spread awareness and usage?

We can probably add four digit or even two digit code tags for the early days to make it easier to find people in a much wider region...

And if someone is around #geo8ccgqv #geo8ccg #geo8c #lisbon, maybe we should meet up! (I recommend to add name based tags to increase reach for people who look for places by name of course)

I wonder if #PlusCodes could viably be used as hashtags to generate some sort of geographically #local feed.

The first six characters of a plus code denote an area of roughly 5x5 km², so if I take a full plus code like "9F4MG98H+G3", and then create a hashtag using the first six characters, like #9F4MG9, adding that hashtags to posts would allow others to find activity in a certain region.

https://plus.codes/map

As I basically drowned on Twitter, let's try here to see if someone can help me out: what would be the cheapest possible device that has some kind of location (GPS etc), some kind of display and some kind of input?

Context: I created whenwhere.cf as a proof of concept for hopefully some day creating a cheap device for addressing in the poorest regions, when phones are a luxury. Having cheap navigation and addressing without map or internet dependency can hugely improve people's lives.

Google’s new Address Maker app allows governments to easily create new addresses at scale using open source Plus Codes https://squeet.me/objects/962c3e10350d9d335ec01baed386d9f3c978ea7a