The life-saving app that finds everything apart from profits

A LITTLE more than a year ago, hundreds of thousands of people packed the streets of London in the queue to see the coffin of the late Queen.

- Simon Hunt

We British are known for our queuing etiquette, but even for us, something which at its peak ran as long as 10 miles had the potential to become very unruly. Mercifully, a novel piece of technology was on hand to assist.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) issued instructions to attendees on where they should head to join the back of the queue. "Go to tent.pipe.descended" for the queue, said DCMS on Twitter. "Now head to doll.heads.effort. Now same.valve.grit.

Now trendy.format.fuel." The response of a lot of people might have been: "What on earth are you talking about?" The locations sounded more like MI5 code names than places on a street Westminster. For many, this was their first introduction to what 3 words: a geolocation app designed to make it easier to pinpoint precise locations using three-word co-ordinates when an address either doesn't exist or won't suffice.