An open platform for publishing applications (stifflog.com)

There are plenty of solutions out there that solve this problem. Development platforms such as NOLOH, Echo, Cappuccino, GWT, to name a few.

I hope he doesn't try to solve this without taking a look at what's already out there.

We call these mobile agents. It's a fun paradigm for programming certain types of systems / apps.

Sounds like ChromeOS.