Here's the idea:

• poll the network front at regular intervals

• is this one different to the last poll?

  • if yes then, save in some persistant store

• then a ui that just lists the captured versions and allows display (something like a simple list on the left hand side)

Update

Well that was the original idea. Some more thoughts:

• what I really want to know is "where has this item of content been promoted"

• e.g. for url X:

  • 9:45-9:50 Sport front -> Auto position 5
  • 9:45-10:00 UK Network front -> Main trailblock -> position 7 sublink 2
  • 10:30-10:35 UK network front -> Special trail -> position 1
  • etc

• how to do this:

  • every minute, poll all the fronts and store time + url + page + component + position
  • then given a url
    • get all the "promotions"
    • aggregate the contiguous minute entries for the same component + position
    • return

• detecting simple "position" is easy - just do which url in the list of the component

• sublinks is more tricky - can we identify that it is a sublink - yes: if one of its parents is "sublinks" then it's a sublink