I'm not sure the author of this Red Herring article knows much about what he's talking about. I'm wary of people that need Forrester to spot a trend, and talking of Internet-based applications as a "mysterious new opportunity" is ludicrous. However, here's Droplets. It takes a 950 Kb download on a Windows machine to start a discussion, so it's not exactly a lightweight web app.

03/08/01 update: Oracle will introduce portlets. These metoolets are becoming ridiculets.