Okay.. this is just a placeholder as I explore the new thingy object more and realise what it's fully capable of - then I'll write up a better article with screenshots, etc. 

In the meantime - here's JT's explanation on irc of what a thingy is and is capable of:

<rizen> thingy = point and click web application builder
<rizen> inside a thingy you can have as many things as you want
<rizen> you could rebuild imdb.com in it if you wanted to
<rizen> each thing is like a table to use database terminology, or a form to use paper terminology
<rizen> when you create a thing, you add your fields to it
<rizen> so do you want to build an archive of your dvd collection?
<rizen> or a rolodex
<rizen> or an inventory system for work
<rizen> you have to decide what youre building before you start

<rizen> well consider this for a second
<rizen> lets say that you wanted to create a rolodex of everyone that works where you work
<rizen> you could create 2 things: Employee and Organization
<rizen> Employee would have things like name, address, email, phone
<rizen> and org would have things like name, address, fax, web site
<rizen> with thingy you can link two or more things together
<rizen> so organization could become a field in employee
<rizen> and it would show a drop down of all organizations that have been defined so far
<rizen> for that matter, even Employee can be linked back to itself
<rizen> so you might have a field called "Manager" that links to another employee
<rizen> in this way, you can link all your things together
<rizen> and build a database of anything that you want
<rizen> and that database can have many many many levels of depth
<rizen> that's why it's different than data form
<rizen> dataform is really meant only for collecting information
<Radix-wrk> Hmm.. that does make it far more powerful
<rizen> thingy is meant to build applications for managing data
<Radix-wrk> I'll have a play with it more then and see if I can write up a wiki article on it with an example of something like that then
<rizen> eventually, once we get all the bells and whisltes into thingy, we may not need a dataform anymore
<rizen> but for the time being, they both serve a purpose
<perlmonkey2> make a survey out of thingies
<rizen> oh...i should mention one other thing...if you want to get really advanced...you can attach workflows to each event that happens in each thing in a thingy
<rizen> so you might send an email when a record is added
<perlmonkey2> thingyies plus workflows really could do fancy surveys
<rizen> or trigger some sync process with an external system every time a record is updated
<Radix-wrk> cool
<Radix-wrk> well that's something the data form can't do certainly
<rizen> but that's only once you've mastered the basics
<rizen> i fully expect to see a new area in the user contribs for applications people have created based upon thingy
<rizen> thingy's are fully exportable via the package system, so you can build them, export them, and import them on another site