What3Words
While trying to help lost pets for the last 14 years, a constant issue has been nailing down the location of the lost cat or dog. People give wrong addresses or wrong cross streets. Usually, they don’t give any location information at all unless you persistently ask for it. When trying to help a stray dog in particular, knowing the location quickly can make a huge difference.
On an iPhone, and I assume on most other phones, each picture you take has location information. If I take a picture on my iPhone, I just swipe up on the picture and it shows the location on a map. It would be great if, when people are posting about a stray dog or a found cat, they could post the photo they took and also a screenshot of the map data associated with that picture. In fact, it’s in the rules of our group of 31,000 people, Lost Dogs of King County, that you have to include those sorts of details when you post about a dog that is lost or stray. Most people don’t do it.
Just recently, I’ve discovered an app called What3Words. I really like playing around with it, but I think it could be a vital tool for lost pets. It puts the location information right on the picture, in a simple format, so anyone can navigate to the location where that picture was taken. If you were to put the longitude and latitude on the picture, that would be good information, but then it would be a bit of a task to get that information into some navigation app to try to get there quickly. What3Words has given a three word label to every 10-foot square on the surface of the earth. Using the What3Words app, you can find any location by knowing its words, and then it will switch you to your preferred navigation app to get there. There is also a compass feature, if you are close, to guide you to the exact spot. The more I use this app, the more useful it becomes. I would like to see it become the standard when communicating about lost pets. It would save so much time, and it could be a lifesaver for some pets. Please download the app and practice using it.
I didn’t even know it had a feature to label photographs until I was just poking around in the app and seeing what different things it could do. You can work with pictures in two easy ways. First, you can just open the What3Words app and snap a picture. It will put the label right on it, and you can save it or share it. Another way you can use the app is to open What3Words, choose the photo option from the menu, and then choose the picture icon. Then you can select any picture in your camera roll, and it automatically gets the location data from your phone and puts a What3Words label on the picture. You can move the label around to where you want it.
There are other apps that attach location information to a photo. I think they could be handy in some cases. Theodolite is one app that I could see being useful for lost pet searches. It has more complete and precise information, but is not so handy to use. It’s better than no information, for sure.
If you practice using What3Words, it would only take you a few seconds to put the location data on any picture you took of a stray dog or a lost cat. Taking a moment to include critical data could be a lifesaver for a dog or cat.