A ruby script that inserts proper TimeStamp nodes into a Google Latitude KML export.

gistfile1.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require 'rubygems'
require 'nokogiri'
require 'chronic'

if (!ARGV[0])
  STDERR.puts "usage: #{__FILE__} <input.kml>"
  exit 1
end

doc = Nokogiri::XML(open(ARGV[0]))
STDERR.puts "processing KML file..."
doc.xpath('//xmlns:Placemark').each do |placemark_node|
  STDERR.print "Placemark found: "
  name_node = placemark_node.at_xpath('xmlns:name')
  timestamp_node = placemark_node.at_xpath('xmlns:TimeStamp')
  if name_node && !timestamp_node
    timestamp_node = Nokogiri::XML::Node.new "TimeStamp", doc
    when_node = Nokogiri::XML::Node.new "when", doc
    begin
      when_node.content = Chronic.parse(name_node.content).utc.iso8601
    rescue
      STDERR.puts "couldn't parse \"#{name_node.content}\"."
      exit 1
    end
    timestamp_node.add_child(when_node)
    placemark_node.add_child(timestamp_node)
    STDERR.puts "added #{timestamp_node.to_s} node."
  elsif timestamp_node
    STDERR.puts "existing #{timestamp_node.to_s} node."
  else
    STDERR.puts "couldn't find a <Data name=\"timestamp\"> node."
  end
end

STDOUT.puts doc.to_s