Someone in the comments mentions Conque (http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2771 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2771) which makes

Someone in the comments mentions Conque (http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2771 http://www.vim.org/scripts/script.php?script_id=2771) which makes it easy to run other applications (mysql, irb, etc.) in a split and send text from your current buffer to the other program. As the commenter mentions, this is sort of the opposite of what this vimcast shows, and for some people might be preferable.