Ever see a nifty tool that solves a problem for a particular domain that you may never encounter but wish you had a reason to use it?

I did that recently with this VIN API by the people at the PullMonkey blog.  It will easily decode a VIN, returning the make, model, year, and other useful information about the vehicle.  It was developed for Mr Quotey, a new free online insurance service.

Check out the post if you would like to try it out, it even provides a simple example written in Ruby.