Wow, the outpouring of offers from the community has me a bit beside myself.  Thanks to everyone who has offered to help make Windows Media Player better by participating.  To answer a few common questions:

I have more than 20k songs and a huge database.  How do I send it to you?

Your Player database is located at “C:\Documents and Settings\YOUR_NAME_HERE\Local Settings\Application Data\Microsoft\Media Player\CurrentDatabase_59R.wmdb”  This is the file that we're looking for.  Old and new is good. They can be quite large so if you could post it to an FTP or Web and send me the download location, I'll aggregate this and get it back to the team.  Otherwise we can work together to get a burned disc sent out.

If you send in email, please put “Player“ somewhere in the subject line. :)

I'm concerned about anonymity.  What are you doing with the information?

As exciting as your content might be, we're really not going to be sharing it or making fun of your Yanni or Zamfir the Pan Flutist collection.  Real world data = better results as we're striving to improve the player. If you want to be anonymous, that's fine, just let me know.  If a developer wants to contact you, I'll get your permission first. No strings attached.

Who are you?

I guess I should have a “Who am I” page up on the site.  I'm the Group Product Manager for Digital Media in Consumer Windows, among other things.  Most of all, I'm passionate about technology (as you can see by the title).

Thanks everyone for your help.  I can be reached at sean_alexanderathotmail.com. 

The Windows Media Player team is looking for users with massive databases- 20,000+ songs in your library.  If you're willing to offer up your database anonymously to help with performance testing and you have 20k+ songs/files, please fire me off an email.  Thanks!

My fourth and final trip this month was to visit my sister and watch her defend her Ph.D. thesis on Mengingococcal Phase Variation. It was an hour-long presentation and I was blown away by her professionalism and ability to immediately respond to all questions.  She got her Ph.D. and I am very proud of her.

BTW: Delta Airlines holds my personal record for the worst seating conditions on a 5 hour flight.  My kneecaps are still bruised and I'm only 6 feet tall. I can't wait until the lawsuits start against the airlines for inducing deep vein thrombosis and other medical conditions exacerbated by the conditions on these planes.  Hell, now I have to pay $4 to get a bag of nuts?  I only flew Delta because they go direct into Atlanta.  Never again.

ExtremeTech has recently posted their roundup of iTunes vs. WMA entitled, “iTunes Bad, WMA Good“.  This is not another audio quality comparison, but rather a look at the many different dimensions and misconceptions regarding the music file formats out there. (eg, iTunes is not true AAC, it's AAC+Fairplay = proprietary and available only to Apple at this time).

I'm reserving opinion but rather pointing out the article for discussion. Discuss away here or in the comments on the ExtremeTech site.

MS Mobiles is reporting on what purports to be the first public, authenticated photos of the new Motorola MPx220, successor to the MPx200 currently available in the US via AT&T Wireless.  The new version includes Windows Mobile 2003 (with WMV9 & Photo Story WM Image codec support), integrated bluetooth, and a VGA camera.  Rumor-mongers are debating whether this phone may come to T-Mobile in the US and/or offer EDGE support (2.75G) via AT&T Wireless.  I'd wait in line for this one.

You've probably seen the commercials- people who look like their Hondas.  Well, I got an email “Casting Call” from Honda asking,

Do your eyes shine Eternal Blue Pearl?
Know the right way to accessorize?
Love your body?
If so, we want you to star in a new online commercial.

Right now, love.honda.com is searching for people who look like a Honda. That's right, in addition to a lifetime of dependability, Honda now offers 15 minutes of fame.

That's right, Honda is looking for people who look like a Honda to star in new commercials.  Unfortunately, I probably look more like a Civic than the S2000 I drive... oh well, I'll have to pass on this one but feel free to enter- Honda ownership is not required. Even if you don't own a Honda, the ability to rate submissions is funny.

Try this little gem that's been circulating this weekend, bad english aside.  A fun puzzle for those who like Myst-style games.

According to MS Mobiles, Codent Technologies is almost done with their RSS Aggregator/Reader for MS Smartphones, built with .NET Compact Framework.  I haven't tested it yet but you can look at a preview and download the latest test version.

Corey Gouker, a kindred spirit with a passion for technology offered a few nights ago to send along some feedback on Windows Media Player.  I asked him to send me an email that I could digest offline.  The result was a good, solid list of suggestions with reasoning behind his points. He may self-describe some comments as rants, but I prefer to look at them as personal perspective and feedback.  I'm so impressed that he took the time to do this.  I sometimes try to get this kind of feedback through the newsgroups, but it seems that blogging is delivering a different kind of communication and feedback that isn't often seen in my personal opinion in newsgroups.  Naturally different mediums, different dialogues and different users. 

So I've printed out Corey & Co's suggestions and am giving them a hard look over. I've passed the feedback on to the development team.  Perhaps I'll cover in another post the process the team uses to gather and submit feedback. 

If others have feedback, you can always post it here or send me email.  While I can't respond to all comments, I'll be sure to read them and submit the constructive ones :) 

Off to PMA Convention in Las Vegas tomorrow.  I'll have a copy of Corey's feedback to digest on the flight. 

This is what I love about blogging- someone asks a question, you answer, and then you get helped in return.  In response to my Tips for Windows Movie Maker 2 answering Adam's question about Tips and Tricks for Windows Movie Maker 2, Craig points us to a phenomenal site, www.windowsmoviemakers.net. Complete with well-traffic'd forums and a robust how-to section, this is a great example of the community in action.

Kartoo is a visual search engine that is definitely starting to turn heads.  The visual map cleanly uses Flash to visually represent rankings and relative weighting of sites based on search keywords.  Just type in “Sean Alexander”, “Chris Pirillo”, or “Robert Scoble”.  You'll see what I mean.  What it lacks in speed, it makes up for in context.

[Update] And along those same lines for Music, check out www.musicplasma.com which is a great example of WM Player extensibility.

Adam asks,

“Im just about to have my first go at Windows Movie Maker.. Any tips?”

No problem. My first tip is to start with the relatively unknown treasure-trove of articles, tips and tricks at http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/moviemaker/.  There are how-to articles, free downloads with add-ons, pointers to 3rd party transitions and effects, and articles at three levels: Beginner, Intermediate and Expert.

Here are a few of my personal tips:

• Use transitions sparingly... outside the basic wipe or fade. 
• Use one of the roll-by video effects for credits, and bring in your favorite Photo Story (just drag and drop the .wmv into Movie Maker, or for more basic transitions, bring photos into MM2). These make for fun and easy eye-candy as the credits are rolling.
• Create two images in paint (or your favorite photo program, I use Digital Image Suite 9 and Photo Shop for more advanced stuff).  Make one 720x480 all-white, another all black.  Use these for dramatic (and timed) fades to black or white in your project.
• Check out www.sounddogs.com for more sound effects, and one of the world's largest online music libraries.  From loops to just about any type or mood, they have it.  I use their stuff all the time for public demos.
• Play with the video effects.  Sepia + Older Film Grain = a neat effect.
• Visit the Movie Maker Newsgroup on MS.com.  PapaJohn is one of our great MVPs who also runs an in-depth site on MM2 and knows a lot more than I do.

We're always looking for good home videos to showcase on Microsoft.com.  If you have one (with rights-approved music), and are interested in the fame and fortune that comes with this (okay who are we kidding?), please let me know here or in email.

I hope that helps.  If others post tips and tricks here, I'll be sure to aggregate them. We're also working on a project to make how-to's across our digital media features more discoverable.  As always, let us know what you'd like to see.