Back in Cairo after a brief layover in Rome that was definitely Not a Roman Holiday. Here’s what I’ve been reading this past week:

Concharto: The previously lauded Time Space Map changes its name to Concharto, and has been nominated for the 2008 Prix Ars Electronica in the digital communities category (which, er Wikipedia won in 2004:-).
• Map tiles as a KML overlay: It’s been done before back in 2005, but for whatever reason the service never survived: Google Maps tiles as a KML network link overlay in Google Earth, courtesy of Cristian Streng over at Mobile GMaps. But this time round, not just that tile is available — pretty much any map that is served over the web via tiles is supported: content from Windows Live Maps, Yahoo Maps, Ask.com Maps and OpenStreetMap.
• Live video maps mashup: Swedish live video startup Bambuser gets a live Google Maps mashup feature. The georeferencing is less high-tech than Seero‘s, but Bambuser has the advantage that you can send video live from your mobile phone (which Seero can’t yet, and like Qik, which however lacks the mapping feature). Just missing the KML network link now!
• Second Life on the mobile phone: Second Life for the mobile phone is almost upon us! Vollee is the company behind that tour the force. But this also means a mobile version of Google Earth can no longer be considered a physical impossibility. Imagine adding iPhone-like touch-screen controls to that demo…
• Cool new KML editing tip: Richard Treves shows you how to consolidate style tags in KML created by Google Earth.
• Persian petition: Signatures for the petition Immediate and unconditional deletion of “Arabian Gulf” from Google Earth reach 598,615! Most signatories don’t seem aware that both “Arabian Gulf” and “Persian Gulf” are marked in Google Earth, with an explanatory note, but the petition text doesn’t feel the need to disabuse readers of that assumption.
• GPS iPhone?: So the 3G iPhone may include proper GPS positioning after all. That would make it far more useful for proper mapping applications than what the current technology provides (triangulation via cell phone towers). Geotagging of photos and geotracking would all be accurate to within a few meters. (Nokia N95 update — successive firmware updates to my N95 mean that a true GPS fix is now had within seconds anywhere in Europe and Egypt that I’ve tried… with a little assistance of a Nokia server that does the labor-ntensive raw GPS signal decoding). If the iPhone gets the same level of functionality as my Nokia N95, it will run rings around the rest regarding design and build quality. My N95 may be feature laden, but the build is is feeling rickety and the GUI is slooow.
• Google Sky horizon: a horizon for Google Sky — for any location on Earth, as a network link updated every 10 minutes.
• Sense of place: Ed Parsons looks at the latest version of Google Earth from the perspective of how it generates a sense of place.
• HoudahGeo updated: Mac photo georeferencing tool HoudahGeo (‚Ǩ25) is updated to 1.4.8, with “vastly improved Google Earth geocoding. Google Earth geocoding now provides readings of altitude in addition to latitude and longitude. It now also works when the Google Earth view is tilted.”
• JetPhoto goes geosavvy: JetPhoto Studio 3 is a major new release of a photo organizing and web publishing tool for both Mac and PC. It’s an interesting hybrid — there is a free basic standalone application, but also a PHP-based server component (not free). The standalone viewer reads GPS track data and generates Google Maps and KML. Worth checking out.
• KML for maps test: Fortius One’s blog Off the Map compares KML support by Virtual Earth and Google MyMaps. Elsewhere FortiusOne’s Sean Gorman updates us on their progress building a robust system for sharing and publishing metadata-savvy geospatial content.
• ArcGIS Explorer swipte tool: ESRI celebrated Earth Day showing off some features that other virtual globes can’t compete with — for example the swipe tool.
• Google Earth for Anthropology: I so hate giving money to Elsevier for scientific research that should be freely available to all, so does anyone have a backdoor link to this scientific paper: Google Earth, GIS, and the Great Divide: A new and simple method for sharing paleontological data? (Via ubikcan)
• Shocking: NASA World Wind developers and long-time Google-Earth critics “Bull” and Chad actually kinda like Google Earth 4.3 a little — lauding those additions I was the most lukewarm about.
• Late in reporting, but for the record: Brian Flood’s GETools is an API of sorts for Google Earth for PC. China satellite debris shown in Google Earth.