Litenode is a new module that uses Views to replace multiple node_loads() on a page.
The concept is simple: Views already knows how to grab any of the fields in a single go that many modules load independently in their hook_nodeapi('load'). Why not have Views grab them all at once (as you would do in a table view, for example) and then have a style plugin map the Views fields to all the places where modules expect them to be on a loaded node?