Region-specific latest posts

[tisoi]

Title
Region-specific latest posts

Short, concise description of the idea
Enable one to view the latest posts from LiveJournal users from a specified region (e.g., state, province, country).

Full description of the idea
This idea first came to me when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated in the Earth's atmosphere over two and a half years ago. Witnesses were able to see the space shuttle remains hurling through the sky over parts of the country. I was curious to know if other LJ'ers had seen it and what they had thought of it.

This idea came back to me after the destruction of hurricane Katrina in the Gulf States. While region-specific communities like neworleans are helpful, not everyone from NOLA is on it. Furthermore, community posts, in my experience, are typically less personal than posts found in individual journals.

This feature would have been useful during the bombings in London and Madrid, the 6.8 earthquake in western Washington State of 2001, the September 11 attacks, etc.
An ordered list of benefits

• As an informational tool, it would allow people who live afar to find out how people from afar are taking a current event happening in their area. It could be a natural disaster, a bitter political campaign, a scandal, or simply to satisfy curiosity about what people in a certain place are like.
• 
  A user doesn't have to use the directory function and manually click on each journal's page to view individually (thus reducing bandwidth).
• 
  As a student of linguistics, I think it would be helpful in limiting the view to a particular location where a certain language or dialect is spoken.

An ordered list of problems/issues involved

• A person actually living in one locale can claim they live somewhere else when they don't, but I think they're a relatively small exception.
• 
  
  Some people just don't prefer to list where they live.
• 
  
  Server load.

An organized list, or a few short paragraphs detailing suggestions for implementation

• The regional information can be drawn from user profiles.
• 
  
  There would be three levels of specifying the place; by city, by state/province, and by country. This is as per the user profile
• 
  
  A one month archive, sorted by day.
• 
  
  This could be an extra feature added onto /stats/latest.bml