I've spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about this problem lately and haven't found a good answer. The need for pagination seems to stem from:

1. The desire to limit the size of HTTP responses. 2. The lack of the ability to notify a browser that you're done loading/rendering async content.

Aside from page-flip-metaphor apps like the one posted here, it doesn't seem like a desirable UX pattern.

Have there been recent (or not so recent) developments in either of those problem areas?