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You probably know the route to your house so well you could drive it in your sleep. But when you’re travelling in another country, street names (and the directions people give you) can be so confusing that not even Google Maps can help you. Or maybe the street names in your neighbourh­ood have changed, you have to meet someone on a hiking trail or you always forget where you parked your car at the mall. A British company called what3words came up with a solution to make addresses easier to remember: They’ve reduced addresses to three words, without any numbers. They divided the whole world into a grid of 3 m x 3 m squares (about 57 trillion them) and each square has its own unique three-word address. The map is available in 26 languages, including Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu. Remember, it’s not only streets that have a what3words address. For example, the address for the upper cableway station on Table Mountain is “infusions.subtexts.nurseries” and the Phalaborwa gate into the Kruger Park is “filling.impeaching.spoilers”. What3words hopes to become the global standard for communicat­ing location so that everyone in the world can have a simple, accurate and reliable address they can use. The system has already been employed with great success by NGOs working in rural areas or informal settlement­s, where addresses are often difficult to find. Even pizza delivery services are using it to get their pizzas to the right place. In Mongolia, it has become the official address system! So what’s my address? Visit map.what3words.com and type in the address you want to reduce to three words. You can change the language of the map by clicking on the drop-down menu in the top right corner. Download the app: The free app is available from the Apple App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android). The app can give directions while you drive. You can also use the map when you’re not connected to the Internet. More info: what3words.com

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