An interesting perspective on why JSON has become so popular compared to XML from MIX Online: The Rise Of JSON:

There is the simple fact that JSON is smaller as a payload than XML. And no doubt JSON is less verbose than XML.  But there’s much more to it than just size.  The crux has to do with programming.  JSON is natively tied to JavaScript. As an object representation of data, it is so easy to work with inside JavaScript. Its untyped nature flows perfectly with how JavaScript itself works. Compare this to working with XML in JavaScript: ugh.  There’s pretty fascinating piece by James Clark called “XML vs. The Web” that really dives into this.

JSON’s untyped nature flows with how the web itself works.  The web does not seem like typing; it doesn’t like schemas; it doesn’t like things to be rigid or too structured. Just look at the failure of XHTML.  A beautiful idea for the purists,  but for the web, its lack of adoption underscores its platonic ideals.

I’m odd I guess since I still enjoy working with XML. Considering our API integrations at StatsMix though, JSON is definitely the prevailing format.

Boxed Ice, creators of Server Density, wrote up a nicely detailed post on how to run a successful beta program for a web application.

Knowing when to release a product is difficult. The maxim “release early, release often” certainly applies but that has to be balanced against making sure you have a minimum viable product and features that work well, with a minimum number of bugs. You also need to get feedback as early as possible to either completely change what you are going to do or introduce new feature you would never have thought of on your own.

As my company’s product, Investify, is now in a private beta, these tips gave me a lot to think about in structuring the remainder of the test period.

I read this article on Mashable (via Fred Wilson‘s tweet) and had to post this quote on building web applications:

Determine a basic need -> Create a service that satisfies it in the simplest way possible -> Open it up.

It sounds simple, but it’s not; determining a basic human need, like the need to share photos or the need to communicate with short text messages is a hit and miss affair.

… I believe now that in many cases it is better to reduce the number of features to a minimum, open the application up via an API, and let the community build on what you have started. This synergy will make your application far more valuable than it would be if it had all these extra features itself.

37signals, Twitter, and a host of other applications are following this model. With the rapidly changing web landscape, I’m not sure there’s a better strategy when rolling out new applications. In the time it takes to build a feature-rich application, the market may have moved in an entirely different direction.

Read the entire article for their rationale, but I completely believe this is the future of building web apps.

I recently received a beta invite from NBC Universal and News Corp’s new video venture, Hulu. After watching some videos, I’m impressed with what they’ve done for a beta release. Hulu offers both full-length shows and clips from current programming as well as classics from its back catalog. In their words,

Hulu offers current primetime shows like The Office, Prison Break, Bionic Woman, House and Bones, and episodes from TV classics like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Miami Vice, Arrested Development and more. We’ve also partnered with premier content owners like E! Entertainment, FUEL TV, SciFi Network and USA Networks to add to our growing collection of premium programming.

Viewing
I watched a variety of shows in Firefox on both Mac and Ubuntu Linux with no issues whatsoever. Your mileage will vary based on bandwidth and video support, but everything was smooth in my testing using Comcast broadband. All the standard viewing options are there with the inclusion of a “lower lights” feature. Turning this option on dims the background around the video clip in the browser for easier viewing.

Sharing
Hulu is somewhat of an anomaly for a large media company like NBC. With all the notoriety they’ve received for blocking videos on YouTube and copyright infringements, Hulu strongly supports video sharing. The embed feature enables users to share the video on their own website. Hulu even has the option to let users create heir own video clips of shows they’re watching.

High Definition
Hulu also recently announced the launch of high definition video clips in their HD Gallery. The selection is currently limited, but I expect the content to grow as rapidly as the rest of the site.

Risks
After pulling its content from the iTunes store and moving to Amazon, NBC appears to have a lot more riding on Hulu’s success. There still seems to be a conflict though – why would I purchase a video on Amazon Unbox when I can stream it for free via Hulu or via NBC.com itself? The main advantage to Amazon Unbox is obtaining a downloaded file that is owned and portable versus streamed content. With more people watching full TV shows online, I’m not so sure the downloadable model is the winning choice.

I occasionally buy movies and will watch them again over time. With television, though, I rarely watch repeats. I don’t save shows that I’ve taped and subsequently watched on my DVR. Streaming TV shows makes a lot of sense, especially after I’ve already turned to ABC.com and NBC.com to watch some episodes of shows I’ve missed over the past year.

While this isn’t frequent behavior, with advanced services that make it easier to watch TV over the web, I can see myself relying more of these types of services.

Hulu appears to be a success. As the begin to add more users to the beta, we’ll start to see how they handle scaling issues. The bigger questions is whether they’re too late to the game. Without available options, many have been relying on torrents, YouTube, and other “unapproved” sources of these videos. Will these users switch their viewing habits?

One of the toughest marketing issues for any business, let alone a company providing web services, is pricing. I recently found a link on Brian Oberkirch‘s blog to On Pricing, a site describing itself as “an ongoing discussion of web app pricing strategies.”

Using Tumblr, a popular tumblelog service (I use Tumblr as well here), On Pricing serves up links, screenshots, and quotes discussing web application pricing. So far, this is an excellent resource for web entrepreneurs looking to learn from others.

The author is Paul Farnell, the founder of Litmus, and a recent contributor to Vitamin on how to price your web application.

Wow, talk about good timing. I just closed my accounts at NetBank two weeks ago and moved them to EverBank. Now I see that NetBank has officially shutdown.

NetBank has steadily declined over the years, but I had been with them so long (7 years) it just wasn’t worth the trouble to move my accounts. I read a couple months ago that EverBank was going to purchase NetBank and after some research I decided to open new joint accounts there and move everything over. I wanted to make sure my money didn’t get caught (or somehow frozen) in the shuffle. Newly married, I also wanted to consolidate accounts with my wife.

I didn’t expect the deal to fall though though, so the news was a shock. I’ll chalk it up as good timing on my part I guess. It appears the FDIC is holding the bag for some 1500 accounts over the $100k limit and ING Direct is taking over the other accounts.

Let’s hope EverBank doesn’t run into the same problems. I’ve been watching them for the past couple of years and have been impressed with their reviews, high interest rates, and unusual financial products.

Center Networks has a great overview of the available options for web analytics. I’ve tried many of these services, but each of them have been lacking in some way. The following services are briefly covered: Clicky, eXTReMe Tracking, Google Analytics, Mint, and Quantcast.

One service I tried recently that wasn’t mentioned was Performancing Metrics which has a robust set of features and a modest monthly charge for full access. Clicky looked interesting, but upon arriving at the home page it appeared to be exactly the same as Performancing’s offering. Even the landing page is the same. Upon close examination, I wasn’t able to clearly see the relationship between the two. Is Performancing white labeling or vice versa?

So I did a little digging to find out. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who had a concern. Andy Beard performed some research and found that Performacing Metrics is in fact just a hosted version of Clicky.

Betaflow also reported the same:

Performancing has just announced the re-release of Performancing Metrics, except it’s not Performancing Metrics. It’s just a rebranded version of Clicky – in which they are surely earning a commission off of each user that ends off selecting the for-profit versions of Clicky.

I know things have been rough in the Performancing camp – especially since there was supposed to be a big sale, but that fell through, and then you had your products all spread out and branded separately (ScribeFire); you lacked the resources to maintain Performancing Metrics yourself – all understandable.

But, to mislead your users by announcing, all of a sudden, a new version of Metrics and it turn out to be nothing more than a ploy to earn affiliate commissions? Sad… do you really need the money that bad?

If having your personal data almost sold to Pay per Post wasn’t bad enough – how much trust do you have for Performancing now?

I don’t begrudge any company from either providing or using a white label service. I do find it extremely dumb to not change a single bit of copy or images from the sales portion of the web site. After seeing this I have little confidence in Performancing (not that I was a regular user of any their services or sites to begin with).

Anyone have any thoughts on Performancing? Am I being overly harsh here?

I watched Paul Kedrosky on CNBC yesterday shrug off Apple’s release of Safari for Windows and was quite surprised by his reaction. This is a really big deal for a couple reasons. Yes, as Kedrosky says, the browser war is an old topic and not as sexy as the iPhone story or new Leopard features. But Apple is incredibly shrewd in this move to introduce its Safari web browser to the rest of the computing public.

While most developers were hoping Apple would open up the iPhone to third-party apps, it appears that isn’t going to happen any time soon. Instead, Apple has focused on using the Safari web browser as the development platform of choice.

This makes sense for a few reasons. First, it’s safer for Apple in the short term to not have to worry about dealing with any potential issues third-party application may introduce. This type of restriction is not new. In a way, T-Mobile and Danger have been doing this for years with their Sidekick. Developers wishing to distribute their apps to the Sidekick have to get them approved by Danger and added to the master catalog that can only be accessed inside the device. The rationale is likely the same as Apple’s – we think we have a slick user experience, so let’s make sure others don’t mess it up.

It’s actually a valid, though controversial, argument; but one that Apple mitigates by having a standard browser platform on the iPhone for web developers to build upon. To date, the biggest issues with mobile web browsing has been the very poor built-in browsers on the mobile devices. JavaScript? Flash? Forget about it. With Safari on the iPhone, a much richer set of applications can be developed. Think AJAX. This is a boon for web developers, but still disappointing for Apple’s community of developers hoping for a software development kit.

Safari ported to Windows is a brilliant move to expand the base of potential developers to web applications that will work on the iPhone. As of yesterday all web developers, regardless of platform, have the ability to build applications that can work on the iPhone. This removes one additional barrier for the development of a nice ecosystem of apps available for Apple’s phone.

Finally, if web-based applications are the future as many predict, what better way for Apple to play this shift than to make a bigger claim to the browser market? Even without the iPhone aspect of this announcement, I still think the company’s move to increase Safari’s market share beyond 5% makes perfect sense.

I’ve been experimenting with Tumblr for a little while now and I really enjoy the service as a solution for micro-blogging combined with Twitter. I’ve previously discussed Twitter as a solution for lifeblogging, but it lacks the capability to post links, pictures, and videos. Tumblr enables the importing of any feed in addition to posting all the links and multi-media I find interesting and want to share without composing a full blog post. I setup Tumblr to automatically import all my twitters as well as any additional links I post manually.

Personally, I find blogs with link posts and short one or two liners outside their topic distracting at best. I’ve recently unsubscribed from numerous blogs that clutter up their typically interesting posts with automated link posting from sites like del.icio.us and ma.gnolia. Don’t get me wrong, I sometimes find these links quite interesting; but I usually would rather not bother sorting through them unless there is some kind of commentary attached.

Tumblr gives users a better forum for this kind of blogging by creating a kind of site referred to as a tumblelog. Tumblr provides a free hosting service for creating tumblelogs providing domain mapping as well as a beautiful dashboard for managing all your content. You can find my Tumblr tumblelog here: tumblr.tmarkiewicz.com

If you’re ready to get starting micro-blogging, check out MediaShift’s comprehensive guide to micro-blogging with Twitter.

I realized my Twittering has temporarily slowed down my blogging. I’m not really sure whether this is good or bad, but I know I have less Twitter followers than blog and feed readers so I’m going to try to even all my posting out between my blog, Twitter, and my tumblelog.

I’m finding that Twitter is working great for my life blogging initiative, but the service is extremely limited when it comes time to construct some deeper thoughts. Being limited to 140 characters is restrictive, but has also been forcing me to distill my ideas.

So far I’ve met some interesting new people via Twitter and had some great hybrid communications using Twitter itself, Twitter direct messages, and email. Not sure this is an efficient way to communicate, but it’s been educational!