Bounty: AJAX Exposed Filters

Hello,
I am about to start working on a 5.x project that will work as follows:

1) View block that displays the most content type 'blog post'
2) The block has taxonomy displayed (exposed filter) list for blogs
3) When the user picks a category (exposed filter), the block will refresh (AJAX) showing the most recent blog post of the selected taxonomy term

Also, it would be nice if there was some way to render the exposed filter list as buttons or tabs instead of a scrolling box. It seems this issue is addressed at:
http://drupal.org/node/79302.

There are a few things I found that are similar to this, but need some work:
http://drupal.org/project/ajax_views
http://drupal.org/project/dynamic_views
drupal.org/node/115949 ---- 6.x only

Placing a $300 bounty for getting this done (PAYPAL). Preferably a module, not a views hack. Feel free to post if anyone wants to add to bounty or take up the offer.