Another thought on my last post: For the web browser to become a really effective interface for utility computing, it’s going to have to change the way it works. Refreshing an entire page every time you click a link or key some information into a form takes way too long, even if you have a lot of bandwidth. Fortunately, rapidly advancing software tools, such as Ajax, are fundamentally changing the old click-refresh cycle by allowing pieces of pages to update independently and rapidly, as Derek Powazek explains. Ajax, which is featured in James Fallows’s column in today’s New York Times, is most famous for allowing you to scroll around Google Maps easily. But the implications of Ajax and related technologies reach well beyond that. They promise to make the browser a far better interface for tapping into a wide variety of software applications running on distant computers.