I love and use this idea, but the OP missed the Shift key. At least Firefox and Chromium use Shift+click to open the link in a new window and I'm pretty sure IE does that as well but I can't test that now.

This is what I use:

  $('.some-snazzy-selector').click(function(ev){
    if( ev.which == 2 || ev.metaKey || ev.ctrlKey || ev.shiftKey ) return true;
    e.preventDefault();

    /* Awesome AJAX code goes here */
  });

I posted this comment on the blog, but it may reach someone else here, too.