• HackteriaLab 2011 in Switzerland is running now, showcasing open-source bio-art and DIY-bio projects such as “bioarduino,” with participants like “mac” and “brain degger” contributing to the event wiki.

• A low-cost Southeast-Asia open-science tour is being planned, targeting Hackerspace SG (Singapore), Hackerspace PP (Phnom Penh), Hackerspace MY (Kuala Lumpur), FabLab Yogyakarta, CIANT (Prague/Vietnam), and Symbiotica (Perth) with visa-exempt 30-day hops and total flights under $300.

• Rapid-prototyping stack recommendations: Sinatra for quickest JSON-over-HTTP mock-ups, RaphaelJS or Protovis for cross-browser 3-D SVG visualizations when WebGL is unavailable, and PhoneGap vs. native Android trade-offs (70 % dev-time savings vs. ~8 s startup latency).

• Business-model consensus rejects “build it and they will come”; instead, clone or improve existing profitable niches (e.g., Bloomberg Terminal plug-ins, Interactive Brokers API tools) and leverage personal networks rather than Kickstarter for hardware like a ruggedized construction-site tablet with 3-D CAD viewer and on-the-fly dimension editing.

• Complementary hardware ideas floated: a fold-up, carry-case 3-D printer for tradesmen emphasizing speed, robustness, and low cost, plus academic-paper scraping as a near-term software project that could attract a quick Mendeley-style acquisition.

• Short-term arbitrage experiments discussed include Bitcoin/Namecoin trading on MtGox (noting bot-driven stability and recent price drops) and a half-serious Mechanical-Turk-powered OKCupid mass-messaging service ($50 for 5 000 messages).

• Security alert shared: WordPress zero-day vulnerability in many themes (markmaunder.com/2011/zero-day-vulnerability-in-many-wordpress-themes/) that exposes Twitter credentials stored in plaintext by plugins.