Kiko is very ajaxy. It’s getting tons of buzz. Is it just me, or is kiko completely unusable? It’s definitely cutting edge 2.0 ajaxy stuff, but could you actually plan your day or life with it?
I don’t mean to pick on kiko. It’s obvious that they’ve put a lot of time in to the project. I just think that we’re falling in to some kind of dot-com trap where we’re using Ajax for anything and everything, weather it’s appropriate or not. Projects and products are being judged on how well they make stuff appear and dissapear on screen rather than their actual usefulness.
At the same time there’s a huge list of apps that are better apps because of their use of Ajax. I love Backpack, Google Maps, and many other Ajax-enhanced apps that I use throughout the day. I’m constantly amazed at what is being done by keeping an eye on The Ajaxian Weblog, Signal vs. Noise, the Ruby on Rails weblog and the myriad of other sites that I see Ajax mentioned and taken to the next level throughout the day.
I really like it when existing apps with solid backends get an Ajax boost. I flipped out when I saw the screencast for an Ajaxified Hula. The great thing is that Hula kicked butt even before Ajax was applied but rocks even more after.
I’m fascinated with the idea of single-url-as-webapp. Ajax gives me goosebumps (in a good way). But please, please, let’s not think of presentation first, usefulness later.