Let's resume this old post! I'm now in the same situation.
I'd like to achieve your first goal:
http://example.com/my-liveblog/timestamp-1
Where my-liveblog is an object with a default view (called "view"), and timestamp-1 is a custom string that I want to append in the URL, read it in the default view and do some things related to it.
I followed the documentation too, but i can't achieve it.
I implemented IPublishTraverse, added publishTraverse method, etc but when I call http://example.com/my-liveblog/timestamp-1 the only thing that I get is a 404.
If I call http://example.com/my-liveblog/view/timestamp-1 it works like a charm.
Am I missing something, or that's the correct way it should work because I'm customizing the traversal of the view and not the object's one?
If I understand correctly, @hvelarde you give up the initial idea and use the /view/ approach. Just for caching reasons, or because you didn't find any solution?