Cr0sh, you mentioned this, but my favorite protoboard of all time has traces to each neighboring hole that you can cut away to build your circuit. It would be really nice if this board had these thin traces too.
I know of what boards you are talking about, I think (I've seen them sold by some guy in China on Ebay). Their similar to veroboards and stripboard, but the traces between holes are thinner.
For thru-hole, you can get away with this, but I am not sure you could with an SMD board, unless you obliterated pads - but it would be difficult to do either with the pads so close together on such a board...?
I am just mainly interested in small traces from the headers to the nearest pads. I noticed that there appeared to be jumper holes on the board which may be connected to the headers, but a direct-to-pad trace could be very useful, I would be inclined to think.
Your idea of traces connecting the pads in a grid should be looked into - it might work out (actually, now that I think about it, I think that guy on Ebay had some prototyping SMT boards like this?)...
