This project was inspired by Paul Lewis' coverage of the UK riots and also some of the community outreach activities happening at the Guardian, in particular the idea of a widely distributed story or one that evolves and changes location.
Dispatch-o-rama uses the n0tice API (http://n0tice.org), JQuery Mobile, and Google Maps APIs. I'm also trying to get some useful info out of other feeds, including twitter.
I've written about the project here: http://www.mattmcalister.com/blog/2012/07/20/1853/dispatchorama-a-distributed-approach-to-covering-a-distributed-news-event/