Michael Lato, a Hammond, Louisiana native and a business development guy for Fotolog, has come up with an innovative new site called thinklouisiana.com to help spark ideas for reviving the southern part of the state. "Ideas spark ideas," Lato told me in a phone interview last week. "Louisiana's problems are multilayered ... You peel back one layer of one issue, and it becomes infinitely more complicated. It is going to take a lot of thinking and leadership. So tell people that we want to hear from them, whatever idea they have."

Consider yourself told.

Lato's site borrows on the technology of Meetup and Fotolog to allow people to post ideas and vote on them. Lato launched the site in January. "I sent an email to 100 people in my address book, and we had about 5,000 hits over the next four days," he said. "We had people offering ideas from New York, Brazil, Chile."

The problem is that the traffic has slowed a bit. So he hired a PR firm and started getting the word out to people like us to draw people to his site. The wide range of ideas offered so far is indicative of the overwhelming task ahead. Everything from closing the ports in protest (Rex Noone, anyone?) to hosting the 2008 Republican Convention has been suggested.

Lato adds that part of his plan is to print out all the ideas from time to time and take them to the offices of lawmakers. "Let me get back to you once we see what the response is from (Senator Mary) Landrieu's office," he said.

OK, we'll be waiting to hear.