1. Local Events
1.1. Upcoming.org
1.1.1. Decent API
1.1.2. Extended Venue Information
1.1.3. Service sees few updates and small community. Assuming that most data is acquired via aggregation instead of user submission.
1.2. Pollstar.com
1.2.1. Most complete local music data
1.2.2. Also, hardest to acquire (no structured syndication and no API)
2. Local News
2.1. Only articles applying to specific locations and or areas.
2.2. Aggregation (Yahoo Pipe perhaps) of local news feeds parsed as one.
3. Overview
3.1. Purpose of site is not to be just another directory of local information, but instead a visualization of the types, trends and origin of local data.
3.2. Site is two-phased, first phase is the live-interface, second is analysis of the stored information.
3.2.1. First phase builds interest
3.2.2. Second phase builds value
3.3. New node
4. Local Tweets
4.1. Data
4.1.1. Added every other minute
4.1.2. N miles radius of center city coordinates
4.1.3. Pull next 100 from last stored tweet
4.2. Display
4.2.1. Initial page view loads 20 most recent tweets, queued in javascript and incrementally added to map a N seconds
4.2.2. After N seconds * 20 (all initially queued tweets are displayed), ajax call to pull next 20.
4.2.3. Queued effect gives feel of real-time updating while allowing some caching and a fuller experience in smaller, less popular areas (less tweeting).
4.3. Archive
4.3.1. Tweets stored indefinitely
4.3.2. Username stored with each tweet, can create related tables later to pull more information for more relations between tweets and their locations / content.
5. Challenges
5.1. Create quick and simple way for local websites (local businesses, etc.) to syndicate their time-sensitive content to the CityInstant platform. Possible via drag-n-drop interface similar to old school 'webclips'-style apps.
5.2. Heuristics to identify and categorize non-geo-specific information.
5.2.1. Ex: Tweets that mention Charlotte the name instead of Charlotte the city.
5.2.2. Ex: Tweets that relate to an already-mentioned (and mapped) event.
5.3. Avoiding duplicate information.
5.4. Providing options for interaction without requiring it nor making them obstrusive.
5.5. Maintaining close-to-real-time updates without killing the server.
6. Integration
6.1. Media
6.1.1. Flickr
6.2. Existing Location-Based Services
6.2.1. FourSquare
6.2.2. BrightKite
6.3. Blogs
6.3.1. XMLRPC
6.3.2. Wordpress Plugin?
6.3.3. Simple RSS submission