Ive been using WMP 11 for several months now, and now that its in public beta Id like to share my thoughts. My hope is that this review will encourage others to try it out, provide a list of whats actually new and/or improved in this version, and prepare you for the areas that are still in need of much improvement. I also harbor the fantasy that this feedback will somehow get back to the product team and be integrated into the product.

Disclaimer

Please recognize that this software is beta. Its entirely possible that the problems I mention here are already fixed or at least much improved. Also, this is a review of WMP 11 as compared to WMP 10, not compared to ITunes. I dont use ITunes, and I wont use ITunes as long as its all proprietary and only works with IPods and the ITunes store. If you want to discuss how ITunes compares to WMP 11 feel free to post it on your own blog.

Installation

As I mentioned, the beta is public, and is available here. Obviously installation does not apply if you are running Windows Vista Beta 2, and in the future, if it is released through Windows Update it might be more streamlined. Overall the installation is simple, fast, and straight forward. After running the installer its pretty much automatic except for choosing whether or not to install the URGE music store. The URGE installation is a little quirky, requiring an additional download and a security dialog confirmation. The typical WMP configuration is also displayed allowing you to choose to enable certain internet/privacy options, and select file type associations.

Appearance

The overall window layout in WMP 11 is similar to WMP 10. The blue gradient theme has been abandoned for a black gradient theme that works well with Vista (Classic or Glass) and Office 12 (black theme). It is possible to tint the theme, but it stays basically the same, with black as the base for the gradients, and only the highlights and background colors being customized (similar to WMP 10 except there you set the colored base, and the highlights were always white). Personally I dont see why they dont give you control of both gradient points. In Windows Vista WMP 11 embraces Glass, with the entire bottom control panel being Glass in addition to the window bar at the top. Generally I think that some people will prefer the WMP 10 theme, but the WMP 11 theme is at least equally attractive, and once youre using Vista and/or Office 12 I think youll find it meshes quite well. The default set of Skins continue to suck and are the same as  they were in WMP10. Who would want to use a skin, though, when the default UI looks so damn good.

User Interface

The first thing youll notice about the UI besides the obvious theme update, is the reconfigured  lower control panel. More space is dedicated to the buttons, less to the position bar, song title, etc. (some might feel toe position bar is too small and difficult to see, although Ive gotten used to it rather quickly myself). The button sizes and positions are significantly optimized. Play/Pause is significantly larger, the forward and back buttons are on either side of the Play/Pause button, and the stop button is smaller and off to the side. I think this is a great improvement because I dont use the stop button all that much, and the buttons I do use (Play/Pause and Skip) are now much easier to hit (NOTE: Just like in WMP 10 the Skip buttons can be held down in order to FF and RW). Another plus is that there are now shuffle and repeat buttons right on the control panel, providing a quick way to toggle those settings without going to a menu, and visual feedback. Speaking of file menus, they are accessed just like in WMP10, by right clicking on the border of the UI, but there is one subtle annoyance, right clicking on the title bar no longer brings up the standard menu, instead it brings up the Minimize/Maximize/Restore menu. This is only true on Vista, however, so Im guessing the use of the OSs glass title bar has something to do with it.

The tabs at the top of the window have been changed slightly. There is no longer any Guide (thank God, it sucked), and its functionality is now replaced by whatever music store you choose (if you choose one). The ugly MSN butterfly is gone, as are the Music/Radio/Video buttons, these are replaced by a single button, again depending on your choice of music store (more on this later), and a sign in/sign out button. The left side of the tab bar contains ever-present forward/back  buttons that are extremely helpful when bouncing between Now Playing and Library tabs as well as within your Library or Music Store. The various tabs that have additional options now have a small expander button below them, which I prefer to the little drop down arrow on the right in WMP 10, but its purely an aesthetic change.

Now Playing

The Now Playing List is basically identical to the WMP 10 Now Playing List. It does display improved media information (at least, I dont remember it working as well in WMP 10). When you move your mouse over the album are it shrinks and displays the album title, and an option to buy the CD. It is also easier to hide the list pane (theres a nice little blue arrow to get rid of it), unfortunately you have to go to the Now Playing menu to bring it back. Also all the problems with the Now Playing list are still present. There is no column chooser, so even if I dedicate a ton of screen real estate to it I dont see the album title for each song (you do get an artist if you have a heterogeneous playlist). There is no total duration for the playlist. There is no enqueue option. Enqueue is one of my favorites from WinAmp, it allows you to set a track or tracks to be played next and then continues to shuffle or play consecutively after the queued songs have been played, thereby letting you jump to a different part of your playlist without stopping the currently playing song or actually moving songs.  Also, in the current release multiple select and drag is not working, obviously a bug which will most likely be fixed.

Visualizations

I gave this topic its own section for emphasis. The visualizations with WMP11 suck ass! They are pitiful. Other players such as WinAmp have had far superior visualizations available for years. Somebody from the WMP team should be on the phone right now with the Xbox 360 team getting their visualization engine ported for people with a 3d accelerator to burn, and there should be a few more being developed that are light on the processor but dont look like total crap.

Library

The library has been significantly improved since WMP 10. The controls are now themed to match the rest of the window, instead of looking like standard Windows 95 controls. The navigation pane is no longer a full tree view that expands out into artists, albums, and songs. This fine grain navigation is now controlled using a breadcrumb style bar above the navigation pane, or by double clicking on the stacks representing artists, genres, years, etc. in the main display window. Using the breadcrumb bar or the directory like navigation comes very natural to anyone who has been using Vista for any amount of time, and is a big improvement over the cluttered WMP10 way. The item list pane in the library also displays things in a much more visually appealing and informative way. Borrowing for the idea of stacks used elsewhere in Vista, and item consisting of a group of albums is displayed as a pile of album covers, offset rotationally so that you can see the corners of the albums underneath. This gives you an instant visual clue as to how many albums you have in a particular genre or by a particular artist. The presence of album are throughout is also a welcome addition.

Playlists

Playlists are displayed similarly to the Library items, but as a separate top level item. Recently created playlists as well as the NowPlaying list are displayed in the navigation pane. There is also a convenient Create New link that makes creating a new playlist a one click operation. The only problem with this list is that having a list of recently created playlists might not be the best selection, perhaps recently played, or most played would be better.

Like in WMP 10, there is a list pane in the Library tab as well, that behaves for the most part like the now playing list, except for a few idiosyncrasies. First off, this seems like an idiotic redundancy to me. There are now three ways I can edit a playlist: the main pane of the library window, the list pane in the library window, and the now playing list, and these all behave differently! My strategy: turn off the list pane in the Library altogether, youll find you work better without it (unfortunately it has a habit of popping up unannounced, like when you create a new playlist). When a playlist is viewed in the Now Playing list pane, there is no save option. Although changes seem to be reflected immediately (song order or sorting for example). So if you remove some songs youll have to do a Save As and over write the actual playlist file. In the Library list pane on the other hand there is a save button, however the sorting and song order are also preserved whether or not you save. Interestingly, when you sort the list, the save button is not enabled, but when you reorder it manually it is enabled, although you can leave the list pane (by clicking this ambiguous orange undo icon in the upper right) and your changes will be preserved. When you reorder songs manually the specified sort column is cleared. In the main playlist editor there is a column chooser and song grouping when the sort column is set. Generally the main playlist editor is the best way to work on your playlists, and all changes appear to be live and there is no way to save or abandon your changes (Ctrl Z doesnt work either), they are made directly against the file. The only other disadvantage to using  the main playlist editor is that it is not possible to drag and drop files from your library, but this is easily overcome thanks to the convenient Add Too context menu that is present in the library. In fact, when you drag a song to the list pane there is currently a UI bug that causes the object you are dragging to show up as an oversized white box, so I avoid this method. Another strange behavior in the main playlist editor is that if you have your list sorted, and then manually reorder something it doesnt turn of the sorting, this can be convenient when youre correcting something that was sorted incorrectly (a year recorded being set wrong for instance), but other times its just weird. To make it worse however, there is no way to revert the list to unsorted in the main playlist view (The column titles act as ASC/DESC toggles instead of ASC/DESC/Unsorted toggles). If you want to unsort the playlist (to get rid of the song grouping) you have to open it in the list pane, manually reorder something, and save it.

Music Store Integration: URGE

WMP11 supports  several online stores in an integrated, in-player way.  The stores currently integrated are Audible.com, Napster, XM Radio Online, Puretracks, MSN Music, and URGE. As far as I can tell, URGE is the only one that integrates completely enough to be able to browse it from the Library tab, but I have only tried it and MSN Music. This section will focus mainly on URGE, because it is the store I have used most, and it is the most compelling online music store scenario Ive seen. It is hands down, the best thing about WMP11. So, lets get started---

-To be continued.

A Final Thought

I'm so damn tired of typing/reading WMP11. What is that, Whimp Eleven? ITunes sounds catchy damnit, why can't Microsoft come up with a catchy name. Perhaps the community should revolt and just call it Cadence (its code name).

I'm not sure if anybody else is experiencing this, but I'm currently getting bombarded by fake friend requests from profiles w/ forward scripts off myspace. Once again idiot spammers are threatening to ruin the internet. I think we should reinstitute using the stocks (as in chaining them up in the center of town and letting the offended citizens come kick the crap out of them) as punishment for these assholes.

Anyway, enough venting, on to some reflection. The explosion of User Generated Content (UGC) on the internet, has changed the spamming landscape significantly. Personally, email-spam is a thing of the past for me. I have good spam filters, and I generally keep my email addresses private, so I'm rarely bombarded with email I don't want. Unfortunately, while filtering the good email from the bad almost a solved problem, filtering good content from band is definitely not. Email spam follows a particular schema, so its easy to filter for, however there are a plethora of different forms of content that are transmitted to users. IMs, blog feeds, comments, ratings, reviews, profiles, and now, friend requests. It would be very difficult to put filters on all these different modes, because each one follows a unique schema, and would require different techniques for detecting spam. Normally this diversity makes it hard for the spammers. They have to spend a lot of time developing automated spamming mechanisms for a content mode that has relatively low reach (compared to email), but when a threshold is crossed, like the one crossed by myspace (read the news lately? #1 site on the internet), it becomes a profitable space for the spammers.

So now I'm stuck deleting all this crap. This is definitely more trouble than its worth, since I couldn't care less about the size of my friendlist. Therefore, I'll no longer even be looking for valid friend requests I'll just be denying them in bulk. If you really want to be on my list, send me a PM and I'll go to you profile and friend you... That should work until they start spamming me with PMs to. Arg.

Is the internet doomed?

I finally got my road bike. My trials bike is in need of maintenance at the moment, so I'm really glad to have something to get out on. It's a Fuji track bike that I have set up as a semi-street bike (fixed gear, relatively easy ratio, front brake, messenger bars). I've been out on it twice and I'm loving it.

Here's a pic of the stock version in black/silver (mine is red/silver)

I'll post some action pics later.

Recent conversations have prompted me to do some blog posts about philosophy. I don't have time to do a full post right now, but a series of them will be coming, after some research and thought. For now, I just wanted to archive a quote I found, which will be a small part of the foundation upon which I build my... argument (there has to be a better word here, because I'm not really arguing since I don't want to coerce anybody into my belief system, just explain it so that others can understand and enrich their own belief by either incorporating aspects of mine, or strengthening their own belief by rejecting aspects of mine). Anyway, here is the quote:

Anyone who conducts an argument by appealing to authority is not using his intelligence; he is just using his memory.
-Leonardo Da Vinci

So Scoble has been digging Second Life hard core lately. It sounds like his son Patrick is the one actually using it, but Robert's been checking it out. And the brilliant conclusion he's come to is that Second Life is an OS. I suppose if you loosen your definition of operating system sufficiently it could be construed that way, but I think its a stretch. What Second Life is, is an application platform, albeit not a very efficient one. I've been using, and developing for, Second Life since it was in beta back in 2001. And you can do some really amazing stuff in it, but it's certainly no replacement for a good old ASP.Net application, and its commerce is fascinating, but it's no replacement for a bread and butter business. Will we be browsing SL tomorrow the way we browse the web today? No. But SL, or programs like it, could be the future of social software (aim, myspace, facebook, etc). Let me put some provisions on that. Instant messaging, blogs, and personal profile type sites will never die, and no, I don't want to be in an immersive 3d environment whenever I want to chat with somebody. But it does enrich the chat experience, and it does provide a cool new way to express yourself creatively (quite a bit more expressive that a myspace page). So I think virtual worlds could become a ubiquitous enhancement of existing social/chat networks, and having a home in SL could become as common as having a myspace profile (and as important for business, if you are a band, movie, TV show, radio station, club, etc).

Is it just me, or is the US government completely out of touch with what the people of this country want? I'm not just talking about the current administration, or a particular party. I'm talking about all levels of government, appointed, elected, and otherwise. I'm not going to delve into technical details of the divergence of the government and its people. I just want to talk about a feeling. A feeling of alienation, helplessness, and disgust. For context, here are some examples: tax cuts while our schools, roads, and other important public services go unfunded; DMCA/Patriot Act/other squashing of our liberties; continued attempts to censor and regulate the last free place on the earth, the Internet. Maybe these aren't the issues that get to you, and we could have a nice long debate about the legitimacy of the government's actions in these various arenas, but I have a feeling that you can come up with some issues that get to you. I don't know, maybe it's just that watching V for Vendetta last night has had an effect on me, but I feel like we're slipping towards authoritarianism. One day we will wake up and freedom will be replaced by fear. We are losing our liberties to oppression under the guise of protection. I think we are culturally aware of this shift, but we seem to be unable, or more likely, unwilling to stop it. I don't think it will be so stark or severe as Hollywood portrays it, but I do believe it is going to happen is happening

Speaking of which, V is an awesome movie. Some of my Seattle buddies and I got to see is last night (before its official release) and I definitely recommend you go see it. It's proof that 1) comic book movies can have a plot and halfway decent dialog, 2) the Wachowski brothers can still make a good movie. Definitely the best action movie I've seen in a while.

TextPayMe.com

This thing actually looks pretty cool. Basically you set up an account, put money into it using a credit card, then say you're out to dinner and somebody spots you, instead of having to remember to pay them back you just text sms@textpayme.com the amount and the destination phone number and it transfers the money (after calling you for confirmation). Plus you get a free 5$ in your account for signing up, and there are no transfer fees (unlike paypal).

Before I begin, I should point out that I don't know the first thing about marketing, this is just my humble observations.

I think Microsoft has forgotten how to market itself properly. Maybe its never known how to, but it's often said that Windows didn't win out over its competitors because it was better, but because it was marketed better. The problem as I see it is consumer awareness. The other day slashdot published a post about Google's new hosted mailing service. The same day Scoble made a post noting that MSN was already offering this service. Unfortunately more people probably read /. than Scoble, so if we polled the community, the vast majority would at least say Google released their offering first, and that's if they had heard of the MS offering at all. Now, most of you will probably say who cares 1) that service isn't that interesting, and 2) it doesn't matter who released their Beta first the one with better features/quality/security will win out. The thing is 1) this is just an example and 2) it does matter. It matters because of perception. Microsoft is perceived as being less innovative than Google. Every time more people know about Google's offerings sooner, or in lui of, Microsoft's offerings that contributes (wrongly) to that perception. The more people suscribe to this belief that less interested they are going to be to try out Microsofts stuff. Not to mention if you try option A and it works, you are far less likely to try option B, even though it may be better, just because you are used to option A nad you know it at least works, where as B is an unknown. I like MSN Search, but i still type in www.google.com from time, just because I'm so used to typing it.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that Microsoft is doing cool stuff, we're just not doing a good job of getting it in to the customer's hands. Both because we take to long to ship our functionality in the form of a product, and because we don't get the word out about our products.

I've decided to make my return to the blogosphere, after a long silence during which I was too bored and sulky to post anything besides whiny diatribes about how much life sucks when you hate your job, for a little LP (that's Link Propagation, not Long Play, although those are good to). Today's piece is a well illustrated article by Kathy Sierra (linked to by Scoble) about why big companies have trouble innovating, and why creative individuals feel stifled or disheartened working inside big companies. Namely, innovation requires risk, managers don't like risk, therefore, companies with lots of experienced managers are incapable of innovating. What makes this article so good is that it has similar complaints to those over at Mini-Msft, but it really articulates that source of the problem, instead of just blaming it on the performance system, and wishing all the managers would get fired.