A new experiment. My server now has a cron job which grabs weblogs.com/changes.xml every fifteen minutes, parses it, and updates a database of weblogs I read. Not all of the weblogs appear to notify weblogs.com but those that do will show up in the side navigation bar (lower right) in order of when they were last updated along with a colored icon. Just for giggles the database also has the lat/lon of the town the weblogger is in or near. At the bottom of the list is a little test link for mapping the most recent weblog locations.
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That is very damn cool! I want one!
It's a mix of PHP and MySQL. The PHP needs the XML option as well, since the crontab app gets changes.xml, parses the structure into a hash/array, and then updates the database.
The other component (also PHP) is called whenever the page is rendered, getting the list of weblogs & update times.
The lat/lon part I did by hand, visiting weblogs and trying to figure out where the person was. I've have an interface where anyone can add/update their weblog's location which I'll be putting online soon.
Ultimately I want to fill the database with tons of weblogs and their locations. I have a spatial search module which would make it easy for folks to find out which weblogs are near them or near some city they are visiting.
Also to improve is the map, since Mapblast probably doesn't want this kind of traffic without $'s. Also, their icons are on the large size and when you start zooming out too far the rendering time takes to long. Better to whip together a few static maps of different world quandrants (US, Asia, Europe, etc..) and then overlay the weblog icons.
None of which answered your question. ":^)