Google-hosted AJAX APIs

Google recently announced a new service for hosting current and future versions of all those flexible and powerful Javascript libraries everyone loves so. The utility of the service smacked me square in the face the other day, as I couldn't understand why a Prototype API method wouldn't work. Sure enough, I was working with version 1.5 (which didn't include the method I wanted), as opposed to the latest and greatest 1.6.whatever.

There are also a number of performance benefits to using Google's hosted libraries, including caching these commonly used tools across the Interwebs, gzipping the code if your browser supports it, and other nerdy things like that. For me, it eliminates that question of, "Did I update this site's resources to use the latest/right version of [x]?" saving me time and making code management just a step easier. Thanks lazy Google programmers!