在Android中优化HTTP请求

我已经注意到，与同一个服务器进行通信的应用程序相比，我的http请求往往花费大量时间。它使我的应用程序呆滞，我想知道是否有更好的方法来发出这些请求并更新UI。

目前，我使用这种方法进行发布请求

public String postRequest(List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs, String method_name) {

    String result = "";
    HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient();
    HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost("http://www.mysite.com/api/"+method_name);
    httppost.setHeader("Accept", "application/json");
    httppost.setHeader("Authorization", "Basic somestuff");

    try {
        // Add your data           
        httppost.setEntity(new UrlEncodedFormEntity(nameValuePairs));

        // Execute HTTP Post Request
        HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost);
        BufferedReader rd = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(
                response.getEntity().getContent()));
        result = rd.readLine();

        return result;
    } catch (ClientProtocolException e) {
    } catch (IOException e) {
    }
    return null;
}

在我的UI线程（即我的Fragment类）中，我在这样的Async Task中使用了它

class MakeRequest extends AsyncTask<Integer, Integer, String> {

    protected String doInBackground(Integer... counter) {           
        String result = "";
        String method_name = "";

        try {
            List<NameValuePair> nameValuePairs = new ArrayList<NameValuePair>(2);
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("id", value));
            nameValuePairs.add(new BasicNameValuePair("name", name));
            method_name = "petition/setPetition";

            result = fixr.postRequest(nameValuePairs, method_name);

            JSONObject jsonFile = new JSONObject(result);
            if(!jsonFile.has("error")){ 

                //Parse JSON using GSON

                return "success";
            }else{
                return jsonFile.getString("error");
            }
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();                
        }

        return null;
    }

    protected void onPostExecute(String jsonResult) {

        try {   

            if(jsonResult != null){                 
                //update UI
            }else{
                //Error message
            }               
        } catch (Exception e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

我想对此进行优化，以便用户可以在我的应用程序上获得真正的流畅体验。我愿意使用第三方http库，或者是否有反对使用AysncTasks的争论，也许也可以反对runOnUiThread()。