If you want to have something that is updated immediately, instead of parsing the log files periodically, I'd suggest writing a module for apache (assuming there isn't one already, I wasn't able to locate one doing a quick search). The module itself could buffer updates in memory so it wouldn't kill performance. It seems like the sort of thing that would be useful to other people. There is a mod_log_mysql that might give you the functionality you're looking for if you don't mind running a small database.