What can Ajax do for your website?

Newsweek has an interesting article on Ajax - its a combination of Asynchronous JavaScript, CSS, DOM, XMLHtpRequest. This technology gives a feel running locally on the desktop for your website. For example, there is no hourglass when you move from location to location in Google Maps! Read more at http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10965121/site/newsweek

A slew of websites sprung up to take advantage of this technology -
www.flickr.com (photo browsing and photo sharing website)
www.writely.com (website for word documents)
www.numsum.com (website for spreadsheets)
www.voo2do.com (to-do list and priority organizing)
www.gmail.com (Google's email)

Most of them have one thing in common - circumvent desktop-based software such as MS Office.