Today, if you are building websites, you are probably using services from any number of web providers (Facebook Connect, Disqus, etc.). You might even be thinking about exposing some services yourself. There's a dizzying array of choices and protocols when it comes to actually dealing with services. You are expected to become savvy with JSON-P, OAuth, XML, SOAP and perhaps even screen scraping HTML. Based on years of experience with building and consuming standards based services, Karsten will review the matrix of options available to you with some practical advice.

1. How To Think About Services For The Open Web Karsten Januszewski @irhetoric Mix Online http://visitmix.com Microsoft

2. If you run a website, you are probably consuming “services.”

3. If you run a website, you should consider making services available.

4. Why?

5. Services encourage innovation by developers.Ultimately, this innovation can drive traffic and increase loyalty.

7. How?

8. By making your data accessible for read/write programmatically.

9. JSONPOXATOMSOAPmicroformats

10. JSON(Javascript Object Notation) +Cross Domain +Easily consumed in Javascript+Compact-Some cases where it isn’t expressive enough

11. POX(Plain Old XML)+Very customizable+Good for documents, encoded payloads -Cross domain from Javascript an issue

12. ATOM(XML Syndication Format)+Clear schema, known patterns+Good for list oriented data-Limited to certain data sets-You have to make your data fit to it

13. SOAP(Simple Object Access Protocol - XML)+Designed for interop between Java & .NET+Sophisticated RPC (Remote Procedure Call) syntax+Flexible security models-Not Javascript friendly

14. microformats(HTML)+No additional code needed+Simple -Limited to existing microformats specifications (contacts, events, handful of others)

15. Final ThoughtsDon’t be afraid! The tools and libraries are mature, so dive in.