[legomylibrum]

While 454 may not have much traction anymore, Ion Torrent is coming out with a new series of devices (the Proton iirc?) and they're competing pretty well with Illumina in the cheap sequencing market. It's something, anyways.

I was thinking of trying to make a smartphone-powered ultrasound awhile back and looked into it, and these devices don't look too complicated. You put a piezo in a little box, and cycle it to send/receive vibration in the form of sound. The software to decode the signal into an image is the hard part. But if it's Rothberg behind this...well, I'll take his word for it being a hard thing to make low-cost.