Lack of Metro funding made national news

Seems CNN has a front page story on the lack of funding for the St. Louis Area Metro.

BTW, I voted for the funding.

Perl + SOAP::Lite + WSSE (Web Services Security) soap:Header

I thought I would share my Perl SOAP::Lite code for creating a WSS(wsse:) header for Web Services Security since it took me a while to figure out all the ulglies. It’s been more then a little frustrating. So if I can save somone the headache I am glad to do it.

Jaiku using Google App Engine

Dave Winer wanted to know how to setup a Jaiku server using the Google App Engine. So, out of curiosity I setup up a Jaiku server up on appspot.com using Adewale Oshineye instructions. Everything seemed to go smooth and I learned a little about GAE from setting it up.

To be honest I don’t have much interest in Jaiku or any other type of micro-bloging service for that matter. My interest was mainly learning more about GAE.

BTW, I will probably just leave it up so people can play with it unless it becomes a problem for me.

http://micro-me.appspot.com/

Roku ads Amazon Video On Demand

It seems the cat is now out of the bag; Roku and Amazon have released the new Amazon Video On Demand service on the Roku Digital Video Player.

I was a beta tester for the Amazon Video On Demand on the Roku and I can say I am happy with the service. I really think the Roku is going to become the defacto winner over AppleTV and Vudu and all the other TV devices because 1 it’s $99 compared to AppleTV $229, Vudu $149 (w/0 wifi) and 2 Roku seems commited to adding other content partners to their device.

As somebody who has purchased and rented lot’s of movies and TV shows from iTunes I can tell you that I intend to switch to using the  Roku/Amazon service. The Amazon model of allowing me to just stream the show to my TV vs. downloading them is much better IMHO unless you want them on your iPod.  I am running out of space on my Mac and would really hate to loose all of that content when my hard drive fails or worse when my backup fails. With Amazon I don’t have to worry about it becasue they store it for me.

Apple could still change the game if they focused on opening up the AppleTV to other content partners(Netflix,Amazon,etc..) and made it worth the $229 by adding a Blu-ray or DVD player.