There are lots of people and organizations that have done high altitude untethered balloon flights in the last few years, publicizing them on the web with video and image montages. This flight/stunt/experiment was different in some key areas. - It was done by enthusiasts of the Rasberry Pi and completley open hardware. - The flight included radio telemetry communication with multiple ground stations, enabling the flyers to track the fight in real time. - The flight used radio to transmit images while at altitude. http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=592

If you have not heard about Rasberry Pi, the project is worth a glance. It is a credit card sized arm powered PC, for $35. And they have announced that they are adding a 5MP camera module. http://www.raspberrypi.org/