Prism is a very interesting little development that the Mozilla folks are working on. Don’t recall where I read about it – probably slashdot. The nub:
Prism is an application that lets users split web applications out of their browser and run them directly on their desktop.
With an illustration that neatly captures the reason for the name and functionality:
I haven’t yet tried it myself but find the concept of further blurring the distinction between the network or server and the local machine quite intriguing.