Ron gets a small flying no-prize for bringing us news of an interesting development in distributed computing:

Scientists have used off-the-shelf hardware to build the smallest flying Web server — a helicopter that can serve up a Web page over a wireless network.

The 2.5-ounce Ultraswarm vehicle represents the first in a group of flying computers that will one day combine swarm intelligence — the ability to maneuver like a flock of birds — and wireless computing to process information the way cluster-based supercomputers do.

As noted, off-the-shelf tends to mean pretty-damned-cheap, so it's just possible this is more than vaporware and could end up being affordable. But since the guy's current record is a single helicopter flying for just a few minutes, it would seem he has a long way to go.