Windows Media Player 11, CodePlex, and Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga Arcade Machine, Oh My
No, these three items don't have anything to do with each other. And I hate to admit that I'm using a single blog post to call your attention to three distinctly different things. I feel like I'm breaking some unwritten blogger rule like: thou shalt not be lazy and roll-up multiple blog posts into one. I'm sure I'll get over it. On to the good stuff...
The first announcement is that we released a downloadable beta version of Windows Media Player 11 this morning. I really like that we've simplified the interface, and I was encouraged to try this: "...optimized to handle massive libraries of digital music—literally millions of tracks—so you can scroll, flip, and browse your way through your entire collection at high speed without skipping a beat." I've lost count, but my wife and I have built a collection of somewhere around 2,000+ CDs. Most solutions don't handle that many songs very well...especially over a network connection. Well, so far, Windows Media Player 11 has me pretty excited. I can quickly scroll through the album view, and it keeps up with me. Awesome! I also love the way the new search feature works, and it's quick. And although I haven't dug in to the audio fingerprinting feature yet, I'm pretty excited about the concept: "...now includes audio waveform matching that builds on existing media information features and precisely pinpoints the exact album information for your tracks." Check it out.
Second, we've released a beta version of our CodePlex site. Their summary describes it best: "CodePlex is an online software development environment for open and shared source developers to create, host and manage projects throughout the project lifecycle. It has been written from the ground up in C# using .NET 2.0 technology with Team Foundation Server on the back end." It's good to see the power of Team Foundation Server put to such a great use. The best part is that CodePlex is completely free. You'll also find an "Atlas" control toolkit, a command-line interface for Team Foundation Server, and IronPython. More information on Microsoft Watch.
Last, but certainly not least, you can win a real, full-size Namco Ms. Pac-Man/Galaga arcade machine! Who wouldn't want that!? Two of the best arcade games ever made, all in a single cabinet (actually, I hear that it also includes the original Pac-Man if you press up, up, up, down, down, down, left, right, left, right, left, start from the select screen). Visit https://www.upgradeyourgame.com for details. Yes, I always check the fine print. One of these days we'll forget to include the "Employees of Microsoft Corp...are not eligible to enter or win" verbiage. At least I can dream. In the meantime, I'll just keep playing with my mini Pac-Man and Galaga units. :-(
Comments
Anonymous
May 19, 2006
Any idea when the WMP 11 SDK will be available to either MSDN subs or the public?Anonymous
May 29, 2006
Wow 3 in 1 huh! Well I guess I wont report you to the Blog authorities. Im going to go check out the Beta release now. Hopefully it wont mess up my playlists!Anonymous
June 09, 2006
The comment has been removedAnonymous
September 19, 2006
Great blog Michael & I'm not sure if you're on the WMP product team but I'm hoping you know someone who is. One question: when will WMP11 offer a real Podcasting integration? (As opposed to this one: http://blog.seanalexander.com/PermaLink,guid,88b882ce-dcad-4311-af2d-15732ba01292.aspx ) I can't believe that what seems like such an obvious feature is still not in the product. Please save me from iTunes!Anonymous
January 04, 2007
i am having a problem playing some video files on wmp 11. i get a pop-up which tries to install a program called PhotoGallery which windows cannot find. at first i thought i needed another codec but now i know this isn't the problem. has anyone had a problem like this? Plz Help!!Anonymous
January 08, 2008
I've been loading my cds and records to Windows Media Player 11. I frequently need to update the album info. Right clicking the album info causes a search of fai.music.metaservices.microsoft.com -. There is a big problem in that the search argument only "ors" the parameters you give it. There are many duplications of album titles, so you can get 500+ possible entries for a simple album title. Why in the world is Microsoft not including an "and" function in the search? The inclusion of an "and" function in search is the main reason google pulled so far ahead in the search engines. By the time others added it, it was too late to catch google. Why did Microsoft not learn from this first failure?Anonymous
June 07, 2009
i have media player 8 and it opens every time i start windows did everything i know i.ie. shut off settings in player, check my startup floder, check my msconfig. Another annoying bill gates trick?Anonymous
August 18, 2009
Just some feed back because I find no other place to do it. In general 11 is great. A sore spot in the library: I have it set to not reload files that have been deleted because there are a whole bunch of files I don't want to delete all over again. Then I accidently delete a wanted file and the darn thing won't let me put just that one back. Playing it won't do it. I can get it into a play list but it still is not in the library. A big wish: Be able to have muliple libraries like we have multiple folders (don't care about sub librarys). It wouldn't be cool if all PC files were jamed into one folder. A lesser wish: Let the darn thing keep my place when I switch from "Now Playing" back to "Library" or any other switch. So annoying when there a lot of files. Thanks for having this blog.