Thursday, June 19, 2008

Google Maps "Street View" hits Tulsa

Google has driven its funny van around Tulsa it seems. Street View is available for Tulsa. This is both pretty cool and kind of creepy. A while back, I called a friend in the DFW region and was able to describe his house, which I have never visited, to him, all courtesy of Street View. Kind of has a big brother aspect to it, especially when combined with the satellite views available on Google maps. I am sure that some criminals are finding this very useful data.

On the other hand, this will help a great deal with my research on Tulsa's architectural history. Rather than actually driving around to do my scouting I can sit here in Bartlesville in my underwear. With the current gas prices, this is great.

A down side, is that they don't seem to be done. There are blank spots all over the map. Especially troublesome is the large swath between Harvard and Yale from Pine to 41st Street, which has only about 15% of the streets covered. I notice that Tulsa doesn't have the little camera icon as you zoom out. OKC does and seems to have many fewer holes, so perhaps they are still driving, or processing data, or something.

2 comments:

Mike Looney said...

Just for what it's worth, they did my area before the ice storm. The photo of the house shows the swing set in the front yard that was smacked on Dec 10th, 2007.

Dafydd said...

Yeah, there are some other areas that show the big brush piles in people's yard after the ice storm. They are probably through driving, so it may be a data processing thing. Or they may have been on a tight schedule, and all of those blank spots represent the areas they were suppose to drive during and immediately after the ice storm.