Google Maps Mania’s ‘maps of the week’ include a great anagram map of the world, a map of photos taken from the ISS, and a map containing sounds recorded around the world.

Jon Snow’s famous cholera map is often cited as the first incarnation of GIS – in the form of geographic inquiry. Now,  Robin Wilson of Southampton University has created an interactive version. TIME WARP!

Very Spatial have an example video showing off a gorgeous rendered map created by Nokia’s new Here Maps, as a personal project by Paul Wex Films.

On the back of Google’s announcement of indoor maps in Australia, the All Points Blog has a quick round up from a few sources that asked if it really works.

A new Pope, eh? Why not brush up on the history of Vatican City, and just what being a Pope means – in terms of international politics. Strange Maps has the skinny, and even talks about a few grey areas in the borders of the world’s smallest country.

The Sunlight Foundation chimed in on an Ohio Supreme Court decision covered at All Points Blog last week. While the decision was about an open records law, Tom Lee believes the decision supports the use of open data formats.

Disruptive Geo points us to several new (free) datasets released by The Humanitarian Information Unit (HIU) that leverage the Office of the Geographer‘s work on mapping International Boundaries. The HIU combined the LSIB dataset with the World Vector Shorelines (1:250,000) dataset,creating one of the highest resolution country polygon datasets available.

The Sydney Morning Herald has an article on a new disaster management platform that will combine data from many vendors and sources, for help in emergency planning and management.