This weekend, Ken, myself and Matt (aka HaveAHennessey on #buglabs) will be in Los Angeles for SCALE 7x, marking the second year Bug Labs attends the SoCal Linux Expo. After a great turnout for Ken and Angel’s session at SCaLE 6x, we’re looking forward updating the crowd in Building open source gadgets with Linux, OSGI and Web Services, taking place on Sunday between 1:30pm and 2:30pm in Concourse A.

If you’re at the show, you can also have a chance to walk away with one of two free BUGbundles! Just look for any of us (we’re wearing BUG shirts) and we’ll give you more information. UPDATE: The Win-a-BUGbundle at SCALE 7x survey is up!

See you there!

Today, we’re excited to announce the availability of BUGsound, the first of the five BUGmodules we announced last month at CES. With a speaker, microphone, hardware stereo codecs and four 3.5-mm stereo jacks, you can use BUG to build your own portable music player, speakerphone, audio server and more.

Priced at $99 and shipping now, you can buy BUGsound from our store today. We really look forward to seeing what cool apps the community can make with this latest BUGmodule. BUGcommunity member finsprings used the BUGbase, BUGmotion and BUGsound to create phunky, a pretty nifty accelerometer-based sampling app. Check out the video to see it in action.

More information and some videos can be found on the BUGsound product page, and you can download hardware specs and diagrams from our wiki. And jump into the conversation on our IRC channel (#buglabs) to see what others are making as well.

For those of you attending the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona this week, stop by the Accenture booth (yes, we love Tiger) and say hello to John Connolly from Bug Labs, who’ll be there showing off a couple very interesting new BUG devices interacting with Accenture’s new platform, called Accenture Mobility Operated Services.  We’ll have an update (and hopefully some pictures) to share here soon.

The Accenture Solutions Pavilion is located at Stand No. CY15 (3-0 Courtyard), Hall IZ11 (7-0).

Hope to see you there!

In a few hours, Bug Labs’ very own Peter and Ken will cross the Atlantic as they head to Brussels for FOSDEM ‘09, the Free and Open Source Software Development European Meeting. This is our first time at the event, but by no means does that mean we’ll be sitting back and drinking glass after glass of tasty Belgian beer all weekend. Ken is scheduled to give not just one, but two, presentations: one, a lightning talk on “An Introduction to BUG,” and the other, an hour-long session on “Hacking with Modular Hardware.”

So if you’re in Brussels, swing by the BUG sessions to say ‘hey,’ and you’ll have a chance to take home one of several BUGbundles we’re giving away at the event. And stop by the Delirium Cafe on Friday to tip a few jars with the guys during Beer Distribution 3.1. Hope to see you there!