JSON request time out or inconsistent result - json

Question

I am using JSON and YQL to access some data from an external domain.
http://jsfiddle.net/NdkPU/22/
But the problem I am having is that the code only works intermittently, sometimes I get a response, sometimes nothing is returned.
Obviously this is a very slow solution to access this data - so one reason I thought might be that it is timing out or there is a problem with the callback function.
Any ideas why the result is not working all the time?
// Start function when DOM has completely loaded
$(document).ready(function(){
requestCrossDomain("http://api.fool.com/caps/ws/Ticker/GOOG/Pitches/10?apikey=rW3550aXdsuJPg4bKEemC13x39jDNR6f", function (result) {
var num = 1;
var browserName = navigator.appName;
var doc;
if (browserName == 'Microsoft Internet Explorer') {
doc = new ActiveXObject('Microsoft.XMLDOM');
doc.async = 'false'
doc.loadXML(result.results);
} else {
doc = (new DOMParser()).parseFromString(result.results, 'text/xml');
}
var xml = doc;
console.log("Data Loaded: " + xml);
// Build an HTML string
myHTMLOutput = '';
myHTMLOutput += '<table width="98%" border="1" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0">';
myHTMLOutput += '<th>Text</th>';
// Run the function for each student tag in the XML file
$('Pitch',xml).each(function(i) {
PitchText = $(this).find("Text").text();
// Build row HTML data and store in string
mydata = BuildStudentHTML(PitchText);
myHTMLOutput = myHTMLOutput + mydata;
});
myHTMLOutput += '</table>';
myHTMLOutput += '<br>Rating: ';
myHTMLOutput += $('Ticker',xml).attr("Percentile");
// Update the DIV called Content Area with the HTML string
$("#ContentArea").append(myHTMLOutput);
});
});
function BuildStudentHTML(PitchText){
// Build HTML string and return
output = '';
output += '<tr>';
output += '<td>'+ PitchText + '</td>';
output += '</tr>';
return output;
}
// Accepts a url and a callback function to run.
function requestCrossDomain(site, callback) {
// If no url was passed, exit.
if (!site) {
alert('No site was passed.');
return false;
}
// Take the provided url, and add it to a YQL query. Make sure you encode it!
var yql = 'http://query.yahooapis.com/v1/public/yql?q=' + encodeURIComponent('select * from xml where url="' + site + '"') + '&format=xml&callback=?';
// Request that YSQL string, and run a callback function.
// Pass a defined function to prevent cache-busting.
$.getJSON(yql, cbFunc);
function cbFunc(data) {
// If we have something to work with...
if (data.results[0]) {
if (typeof callback === 'function') {
callback(data);
}
}
// Else, Maybe we requested a site that doesn't exist, and nothing returned.
else throw new Error('Nothing returned from getJSON.');
}
}

Answer 1

It looks like it's just a slow API. I wrote a simple bash loop that timed that query using curl, and here were the timings:
7.4 sec
11.1 sec
11.2 sec
7.4 sec
11.1 sec
7.3 sec
10.2 sec
11.8 sec
11.3 sec
7.1 sec