... I have a need to regularly deliver some info...
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How often is 'regularly', and how much is 'some'? (Update: I see that you need to do this once a minute.)

My first inclination would be to develop your own interface on top of HTTP (i.e. a REST interface.) It's simple to build, debug and extend incrementally. If you need encryption, just use https. It's also easy to set up action to be performed when you send the data or message. SNMP is a good idea if you already have an SNMP monitoring solution that you want to integrate it with.

Another possibility is to use the Unix syslog mechanism over tcp if you can run a syslog daemon.

I would definitely nix the direct Mysql access - it creates too many problems. The best solution kinda depends on what you want to do with the data and what kind of reliability requirements you have. For instance, you might want decouple the collection of the data and the sending of it to the Linux box in case your laptop can't reach the Internet.