Zen and the Art of app-less applications
An excellent discussion on Goovite, Creative Good's minimalisitic and extremely slick eVite replacement and alternative login methods (i.e. credential channels for you security geeks) over at 37signals.
I do find it noteworthy that all these former service-only agencies such as Adaptive Path, 37Signals, and Creative Good all now have products launched and/or in the pipeline. The barrier for entry into the micro-web-app market (don't DARE use the word 'applet'), is soooo low and the margins, even from simple Google ad-words traffic, are soooo high that there's really no compelling reason NOT to do it. These firms very likely want to grow their business w/o the costs of 'human scaling'. The marketplace has been pretty-well established for web design and user experience services and they very likely want a revenue hedge against service contract/client relationship which goes bad. I still remember that fateful day when 37Signals went from 100% client recommendations to 75%.