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Dare Obasanjo (aka Carnage4Life) has an interesting post on AJAX, the buzzword du jour.

He rightly points out that this is not a new technology, and agrees with Ian Hixie's plea:

So I have a request: could people please stop making up new names for existing technologies? Just call things by their real name! If the real name is too long (the name Ajax was apparently coined because "HTTP+XML+HTML+XMLHttpRequest+JavaScript+CSS" was too long) then just mention the important bits. For example, instead of REST, just "HTTP"; instead of DHTML just "HTML and script", and instead of Ajax, "XML and script".

Dare observes:

What I find particularly disappointing about the AJAX hype is that it has little to do with the technology and more to do with the quality of developers building apps at Google. If Google builds their next UI without the use of XML but only Javascript and HTML will we be inundiated with hype about the new JUDO approach (Javascript and Unspecified DOm methods) because it uses proprietary DOM extensions not in the W3C standard?

I find his especially amusing given the number of people eager to apply the term AJAX to any technology that uses the XmlHttpRequest object. Despite the rather specific description given in the article that launched this term, there are assorted so-called AJAX tools that do little more than pipe back HTML in response to GET requests. There's no XML, no opportunity to apply XSLT; indeed, it's JUDO.

But many people are more interested in buzz than accuracy, so the complete dilution of the term is assured.

Dare also links to a nice post for those interested in the history of AJAX, Ever Wonder Why It's Called "XMLHTTPRequest"?. Indeed, Microsoft's Outlook Web Access was the original GMail UI:

In reality, we have Microsoft to thank for what truly is an innovation. That's right Scoble, GMail and Oddpost are just tweaked versions of OWA, based on Microsoft innovations

Finally, see the follow-up post, wherein in Adam Bosworth clarifies the origins of DHTML (another Microsoft innovation).