Why SpotReg?

Intro

Sometimes it can be hard to explain where you are. You might live in a part of the world where the roads are not clearly signposted or even named. There might not even be any house numbers. You might be standing in a field or in a park. There are plenty of times when you need to explain where you are but there is no conventional address information available. Even if there is an address, how do people find you?

Ordering a Pizza

Let's say you want to order a pizza over the phone. You could:

• Spend 5 minutes trying to describe the various landmarks on the way to your house, hoping that the person taking the order can record the details clearly and be able to pass them on to the delivery person.

• Or you could tell the person taking the order your GPS coordinates - your latitude and longitude. That's a step in the right direction but has a number of difficulties:

  • For starters you have to convey about 20 digits with decimal places and minus signs, plus you have to get the latitude and longitude the right way round.

    • Do you know which is which?
    • Do you know how many decimal places is enough?
    • Is the person you're talking to good with numbers?
    • Can you even remember what your latitude and longitude is? You would probably have to look it up each time.

  • What if you want to be vague about where you are and not give a precise location? Do you know how many decimal places you need?

  • What if the numbers end in zeroes - are they going to get recorded or truncated?

• You could send the person taking the order a Google or Apple map pin. To do this you would have to:

  • Pause the conversation.
  • Switch to a suitable app.
  • Walk to the correct location and find your location.
  • Press the appropriate buttons to share.
  • Find the Pizza order taker's contact details or enter new ones.
  • Send the map pin
  • Resume the call
  • Wait for the confirmation that it has been received
  • Finally, and this is the real issue, the pizza order taker has to repeat the process and pass on the pin to the pizza delivery person.

You might say 'Ah, but the pizza company has got an app or website that makes all this easy'. Well that's fine. But what if the company is just starting up and doesn't have large sums of money to spend on technology? Chances are in Africa that's more likely to be the case and paper is being used to take the order. How do you write down a Google Map pin? What if you yourself don't have a laptop or smart phone with you? You're still going to need to communicate your location the old fashioned way - voice or pen.

The Idea

One of the main ideas with a SpotReg is that you're able to remember one or two locations like your home or office so that you no longer need technology to accurately relay a delivery or meeting location. For situations where you're not at a location you can remember you can look the SpotReg up on a map.

Zip and Post Codes

Zip codes and post codes are codes that address a similar issue. They've been around for a long time and are in use in many countries. But, they have the following shortcomings:

• You need a database to know what they represent. These databases are normally provided at a cost, and even then may not have the latitude and longitude available.

• There are different coding systems all over the world

• In most cases no effort was made to make them easy to communicate, although they are in the right length range.

What We Need

What we are looking for is a code or registration that:

• Is easy to communicate
• Can be used anywhere in the world
• Does not need a proprietary database to look up what it means.