This may not be new to you, or may have been mentioned before, but I just came across these breadboards that make soldering surface mount components pretty easy (especially for complex or fine-pitch devices). I haven't priced any yet or looked over the website very thoroughly, just the video tutorials in the link below. A hi-speed connection is probably a must to load the page in reasonable time.

http://solderbynumbers.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=45&Itemid=48

 

The BGA one is interesting, since I have had issues in the past with these devices

I am not convinced though, since many BGA ASICs need very close proximity decoupling capacitors. How would it be possible for any high edge-rate device?

Steve

 

They appear to be a type of breakout connection. For instance, if you watch the cap/res video you can see that all the pads (0603, 0402, etc) go to a wire via for connection.

I doubt these are very good for HS applications, but obviously it would depend on the specific application and what you can or can't get away with regarding signal integrity. The solder trough and routing doesn't appear to allow good control of trace impedance or length matching. It also wasn't obvious in the videos regarding microstrip layout or ground referencing.