The web application in permanent beta is the latest fashion in today’s Internet world. Some folks believe that after several years of testing, that web applications ought to shed the beta tag and call themselves stable.

I disagree.

Open source desktop software is significantly more flexible than a closed source web application in terms of giving what users want. Desktop applications have extensibility through plugins, extensions, themes, and so forth. Web applications currently have only a weak extensibility through Greasemonkey.

Facebook Apps are closer to true extensibility, but Facebook remains in control over Facebook Apps, which results in rumors that Facebook is going to close down third party apps. Developers creating extensions of desktop applications usually do not have to worry about their extensions being wiped off the face of the Earth.

Also regarding Facebook, some users are not happy with Facebook’s transition to a new user interface. There is even a petition for the old user interface to return. I suggest you compare Facebook to Wordpress. Nobody is going to force a blogger to upgrade to the latest version of Wordpress, but there is little one can do if Facebook decides to switch to a different (and worse, in the mind of the user) UI.

Does my blog post ring a bell? Oh yeah, this blog post sounds roughly similar to Richard Stallman’s opinions on cloud computing. Stallman is dead right. One should only truly trust open source software on hardware within the ownership of the user.

So where does the whole “keep Web 2.0 apps in permanent beta” idea come into play? My point is that Web 2.0 apps ought to keep themselves in permanent beta as a reminder to users that no Web 2.0 app outside of the user’s control is as safe as an application within the user’s control.

Use Web 2.0 apps responsibly™.

I have previously written about Kwippy, and that was pretty much the best post ever on this sad little blog.

Why?

Because I actually managed to publish an email interview with Kwippy CEO Mayank Dhingra . That’s right! An email interview, like those big A-list bloggers do all the time! Yeah!

So, what improvements have gone into Kwippy? How is Kwippy better since last July?

The Kwippy team made it easier to invite Twitter friends to Kwippy, but got some negative publicity. The Kwippy folks quickly modified the feature so it would not spam Twitter users, and then wrote a blog post apologizing.

Kwippy also made some user interface improvements, including the ability for Kwippy users to customize their page with themes. Below are two screenshots comparing the old Kwippy with the current Kwippy interface.

You will notice that in the newer screenshot, Kwippy has the word “Friends” visible in the sidebar. This is part of a new feature that allows you to define who is your friend and who you are just interested in. Think of Kwippy’s “Friends” feature as a primitive version of FriendFeed lists.

Kwippy also added an employee. Matthew Phillips, known as Kestrachern, is Kwippy’s community manager. You can find short bios of (currently, the four) Kwippy employees.

I conclude this (very) quick glance at Kwippy with a note on the small, vibrant community that has appeared there. The lack of a character limit for messages on Kwippy (called kwips) or comments on kwips has led to a manner of discussing that is a bit of a hybrid between a forum and Twitter.

You know why I haven’t posted in a while? No, it is not because I’m really busy, but because the CodingExperiments team has been churning draft after draft and ping-ponging back and forth between them to make updates. The result is a massive amount of half-baked blog posts. Working on posts one at a time and not starting another post until you have finished or given up on an existing post is a good way to prevent a barrage of blog post drafts from raining down on you.

While plenty of people say that producing good content is more important than posting regularly, plenty of new bloggers, including me, feel guilty when they do not post regularly.

Now, there have to be exceptions to this rule. Bloggers that write mostly time-sensitive material, then following this rule could possibly hurt them by delaying the publishing of the posts. Taking a look at this blog’s archives will show that whenever I try to cover something time-sensitive, I always end up covering it a few days later.

Also, if you would like more extremely obvious (or extremely brilliant, depending on your perspective) tips on blogging, you might like reading some of this blog’s other posts covering bloggi–oh don’t bother, I know nothing on blogging.