Rob Pegoraro’s 2-week old review of Google Earth is in The Seattle Times today, and thus misses out on reporting on all the social bookmarking innovation that’s happened in the meantime. But there’s one thing I didn’t know:

You can add “placemarks” for any interesting spots you find, then share them with other Google Earth users via an online bulletin board (bbs.keyhole.com). This ought to be directly integrated with Google Earth, instead of requiring you to save a placemark as a separate file, then switch to your Web browser to attach that file to a posting in that bulletin board.

It should then show up under the “Keyhole BBS” category in Google Earth’s Layers menu, but the program neglects to explain (as a Google publicist did) that it takes about two weeks for that to happen.

Still, the perfect review would have gone beyond drooling at the eyecandy to mention that the one thing that really makes Google Earth unique from its competitors (like NASA’s World Wind is that anyone can publish anything to Google Earth — it need not go via semi-official channels like the (still very useful) Keyhole bulletin board. If Microsoft’s upcoming Virtual Earth wants to compete, it will need to have the same level of openness.