The Image of Korat on Google Earth is one of the clearest that is. But unlike western cities there are no street names or names of places. So Google Earth is only good for recognizing places and being happy about it.

If you have a friend who sends you the placemark of a location you need to find, you're off good. Why should we - the Korat Farangs - not map the place for ouselves and our kind?

All we need is a not so big database where people, who identified a place, can upload the placemark to; and from where people who need to find the place can download it for use or their own database.

So I suggest to the moderators of the Issan Forum to establish a fitting base and try to regulate it a little - like spelling rules and placements of placemarks. It would not only give people fun to map the place but especially help people to find their way around.

One attempt to start this:

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=55234

I wasn't aware that buadhai already had initiated this. A good start.

But the problems are, that there is no fixed place for finding the database, no catalog of contents and no possibility of just downloading one specific file. Furthermore they should be edited by somebody from time to time to select the best file. And especially there should not be only places of interest but marks that can be used to explain somebody the way to a certain place like intersections and turnoffs.

Also of interest were the names and locations of shops other than supermarkets.

Did somebody subscribe to the next higher Google version that allows the marking of paths?

If we work on it, we can improve it to a good system that makes our life out here easier.

There's a forum community where you can upload placemarks:

http://bbs.keyhole.com/entrance.php/

The website

http://www.geocities.com/korat_th

is already under cunstruction by now. It is supposed to hold a directory of maybe 200 placemarks with adresses and short explanations of places in and around Korat.

The emailaddress

[email protected]

is a place where you can send placemarks to - and of course suggestions and comments not to be published on the website only for improvements and corrections.

If anybody is seriously interested in participating - how about Buadhai? - I'll give him the password for administrator access to the site and the email. PM me in that case or send email to the site.

Don't waste your time by calling up the webpage now, only says not done yet. I'll post a message here when it is finished. There's a lot of collecting information and editing to do. Like Rome - not in one day!

The provisional frontpage is there: Tell me what you don't like - or maybe even like.

The website

http://www.geocities.com/korat_th

is already under cunstruction by now. It is supposed to hold a directory of maybe 200 placemarks with adresses and short explanations of places in and around Korat.

The emailaddress

[email protected]

is a place where you can send placemarks to - and of course suggestions and comments not to be published on the website only for improvements and corrections.

If anybody is seriously interested in participating - how about Buadhai? - I'll give him the password for administrator access to the site and the email. PM me in that case or send email to the site.

Don't waste your time by calling up the webpage now, only says not done yet. I'll post a message here when it is finished. There's a lot of collecting information and editing to do. Like Rome - not in one day!

This sounds like a good idea .

One small problem . Buadhai is no longer with us .

Sorry to hear that!

I set up the first page with links to this forum, pics and maps plus yahoo.com.com.

http://geocities.com/korat_th and called it "Korat People's Directory"

There's one problem though: at present Yahoo file manager does not support .kmz files (Google Earth placemarks) for uploading. Maybe I'll find a way around somehow. But at the moment you can receive the already existing placemarks via email. The list is growing.

Jeff 1: Just out of curiosity what happened to buadhai? You mentioned he is no longer with us.

There's one problem though: at present Yahoo file manager does not support .kmz files (Google Earth placemarks) for uploading. Maybe I'll find a way around somehow. But at the moment you can receive the already existing placemarks via email. The list is growing.

Might just make a .zip file if they support that.

http://www.yahoo.com.com is enabled for .kmz files. Works! Upload your placemarks there, and find out how and where to download the existing collection. Preliminary state but working.