Help Map out OKC...

[hipsterdoofus]

Hey all, hope this hasn't been posted before. I recently came across this site: http://wikimapia.org/, in which you basically outline buildings from aerial maps and put a description on them. Oklahoma city is not well represented at all on this site and in fact had the municipal building mislabeled as the civic center music hall (fixed that one). Anyway, I figured there are people on here who would enjoy marking up some buildings on here for OKC.

Thanks

[Martin]

awesome. count me in! -M

[Pete]

That's very cool.

It would benefit everyone to add as much as possible.

[hipsterdoofus]

Great! I would think Doug would definately get in on this too. I am covering all the libraries...or attempting too, since I am quite familiar with them.

[Martin]

weird... just to the southeast of 'lower bricktown canal' is a fairly large section labeled in arabic. -M

[Martin]

heh... just to the north of the capitol somebody made an entry labeled 'lincoln street' and gave it the description, 'major street leading into the capitol, usually where the whores congregate.'

[jdweaver]

very cool find.

[hipsterdoofus]

Yeah, i'd edit that. The point according to the site is to label things that others would find interesting, so no offense, but if someone's house is labeled, it needs to go. I wish it had a login system such as wikipedia, so someone could be held accountable.

[Lauri101]

OK, I give up - how do you outline and label a building or area that isn't already "hot"?

[Doug Loudenback]

The maps I make are normally done with eye-ball experience as the source. But, that said, this could be very nice. I'll check it out more closely tomorrow.

[MadMonk]

That's pretty cool. I'm adding everything I know.

[hipsterdoofus]

Lauri, go to the upper left, to the Wikimapia menu, it should roll down and give you an option to "Add New Place". Once you do that it makes a small box that you can stretch and move. Hope that helps!

I wish that there were some forums or something to give more of an idea of what is acceptable and what isn't.

[fromdust]

thats an old map. how long does it take to get new satellite images?

[Lauri101]

Thanks, Hipsterdoofus - I got it now!

Yes, fromdust - at least three years old. The Galleria Parking lot doesn't even have the phase 1 garage up, and phase 2 is already opened. Amazingly, I even found my car!

[jbrown84]

Yeah it is a very outdated map. I added a bunch of new ones and there's no new federal building on there. No Lower Bricktown buildings. Oh well, at least people will see that there is something there now. I will continue to add stuff as I have time.

[jdsplaypin]

In Stillwater, there's a box around our soccor complex labeled as OSU's football field. haha. Stillwater's map is much newer than OKC's probably only a year old.

[Doug Loudenback]

Hey all, hope this hasn't been posted before. I recently came across this site: http://wikimapia.org/, in which you basically outline buildings from aerial maps and put a description on them. Oklahoma city is not well represented at all on this site and in fact had the municipal building mislabeled as the civic center music hall (fixed that one). Anyway, I figured there are people on here who would enjoy marking up some buildings on here for OKC.

Thanks

Just had a look (at my home computer which is just dial-up). Given the dated satellite graphic and that many others of you have acted there, and very nicely, I think you all are doing a good job and that I'll not engage in this project, given the slowness of my home dial-up. Good job for those of you that have posted!

[Karried]

heh... just to the north of the capitol somebody made an entry labeled 'lincoln street' and gave it the description, 'major street leading into the capitol, usually where the whores congregate.'

LOL - You know you can edit it right? :spin: That's all we need, an out of towner trying to get to the Capital on a family sightseeing visit and getting that description.

What a fun site though...

I've been playing with it .. but what happens to all the places we've added when they update the satellite image?

Some of the places I'm adding aren't even 'there' yet - just dirt on the photo. I wonder if they can superimpose the new satellite pic onto the same exact place in order to line up all of the boxes and new entries? Or will we have to start all over again? Does anyone know about this?

[MadMonk]

I don't know for sure, but I would think that they would save the longitude and latitude information of the marked places and just overlay a new picture.

[hipsterdoofus]

For those of you that asked, the map data is from Google Maps...and yes, their map of Oklahoma City is horribly outdated. I remember seeing at some point that they claim that their maps would not be over 3 years old, however, they are certainly pushing it with the OKC maps. You are correct about the Galleria and such. I moved downtown over 2 years ago and they had started the galleria at that point, in this picture, it doesn't look like they have even started it.

At the same time, the way that Google Maps does, there could be certain portions that are up-to-date, but they certainly need to update downtown.

[muzique808]

weird... just to the southeast of 'lower bricktown canal' is a fairly large section labeled in arabic. -M

Anyone able to decipher that one?

jb

[muzique808]

By the way, thanks for helping me blow two more hours online!

Just kidding, of course.

[venture]

Here is what the systran online translater kicked out:

Iraq Arbil
Arbil is legislating 100 [m] near teacher of Ahmed [aalxaanY]

[Karried]

You have the option of putting in descriptions in different languages so maybe someone inadvertantly put the descriptions in Arabic?

or maybe Arbil is a terrorist. twilight zone...music...

just kidding.. the latest terror alert has me on edge... secret Arabic codes?

[Martin]

i love digging around to try to solve a little mystery every now & then...

so, beyond reading right to left i don't know anything about the mechanics of the arabic language. i took the info that venture79 posted from systran (i took a look & babelfish but arabic wasn't an option) and did a websearch for 'arbil' and 'oklahoma city' thinking that arbil might be a company name. nothing significant. then i did a search for 'iraq', 'arbil' and 'ahmed.' that led me to an article on ahmed chalabi, deputy minister of iraq. i then looked up mr. chalabi on wikipedia to get the arabic of his name and lo and behold it is a character-for-character match to 'ahmed' and the word after it that systran choked on. before the overthrow of hussein's regime, chalabi was the head of the iraqi national congress which was an organization that opposed the former iraqi government. this organization was headquartered in... you guessed it... arbil, iraq.

the latitude (north/south) coordinate for this mystery location in okc is 35°27' which just so happens to be a valid latitude for a location within iraq, specifically the province just south of arbil... about 100 miles.

i'm betting that when this location was added, the system fubar'ed the longitude (east/west) coordinate upon submission and therefore the label is erroneously placed in okc due to the error. consider the dead horse beaten. -M