Fun With Alginate

From Nation's restaurant news (here's a link, don't know if it will work if you don't have a sub) is an article on the latest food fad in fine dining: Alginate Gum. Alinea is mentioned, in reference to alginate gels:

"They'll catch on fire before they melt," says Alex Stupak, pastry chef of Alinea in Chicago.

Here's an interesting recipe idea:

[George Mendes of Tocqueville]says he adds half a teaspoon of the [alginate fiber] supplement to one cup of cantaloupe purée. He uses a food-grade liquid form of calcium chloride that's used in cheese making, adding half a teaspoon of it to two cups of water. He squeezes drops of the purée into the calcium chloride solution and puts a layer of the resulting caviar on his foie gras terrine. Mendes also has made caviar using Madeira and Port but found them to be more fragile than his relatively sturdy fruit caviar.

Have any of you played with alginate?