Sorting is easy, you just choose _id as the sort field.
Selecting is also reasonably easy, the first 4 bytes of the id are the timestamp (seconds since the epoch). You just create a hex string in that format -- 4 bytes of timestamp and then 8 bytes of zeroes and then create an object ID (using the classes provided by your driver) and do:
coll.find({_id:{$gte:<id>}})
or whatever is the equivalent in your language of choice.
Comments
Can you efficiently select and sort on the date part of the _id?
Sorting is easy, you just choose _id as the sort field.
Selecting is also reasonably easy, the first 4 bytes of the id are the timestamp (seconds since the epoch). You just create a hex string in that format -- 4 bytes of timestamp and then 8 bytes of zeroes and then create an object ID (using the classes provided by your driver) and do:
or whatever is the equivalent in your language of choice.