Geohashing

Geohashing is an outdoor locating activity which involves visiting a set of coordinates generated by a hashing algorithm. It was invented by Randall Munroe, and first mentioned in the form of its algorithm in the xkcd webcomic, #426 in May 2008.

While often described as a sport or game, the activity is not competitive in nature. Its main objective is to write an interesting report about the journey to the geohash, to describe the location, and to possibly meet other geohashers. However, it is encouraged to provide proof that the coordinates were reached, if that is the case. Furthermore, a growing number of "achievement ribbons" can be claimed or awarded for particular locations, dates, or achievements.

One pair of coordinates is calculated for every area of one degree latitude times one degree longitude, referred to as a graticule, whose coordinates form the integer part. The decimal parts of the coordinates are generated by feeding the current date, and the opening of the Dow Jones Industrial Average into a hash function. Due to the properties of the function, the chosen locations are evenly distributed over the graticule, but remain constant for a given input value. Hence, people from all over the graticule may meet at the same location on the same day.

As of December 2009, there have been over 2800 expeditions on all populated continents.

References

This sports-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

See also

References