Not in any particular order:

1) any button (remote or front panel) starts the empeg back up after power is restored - instead of it booting up and starting to do whatever it was doing when power was removed. If you must, have it boot back up and go into stand-by and then wait for a signal to turn on the display and start playing. Have it wait (or be user configurable) for a prompt before starting.
2) an option to turn off the flashing LED - or pattern blinks of the LED
3) When the empeg starts from a power-off state, start the volume muted and ramp it up to the former playing level. Any button push during that time will interrupt the cycle and the volume will stay at the level it was at the time of the button push.
4) Prompt for a security code from the IR key pad (or button pattern) at startup time if the power has been removed (user configurable from emplode if they want the option). Have a programmable prompt with the ability to put a phone number or something if the code is wrong: "please call xxx-xxxx if found for reward" or something.
5) Add the ability to upload or download files from emplode to the developer file system(only) for moving files back and forth without starting up a PPP session. It would allow pulling log files (or distributed.net output logs files) and putting new keys to crack on the unit.
6) a better manual. :-)
7) a home docking station for the unit - with power supply, serial and USB interfaces.
8) build a box that plugs into the serial port, the box should have 3 or four inputs and outputs. The box would have a serail driver and set of relays for the output. The imputs would change states in the empeg and allow it to do things like mute the audio, display a message (canned or from a device plugged into the break-out box), control outputs and alarms, lock/unlock the doors, rollup windows - whatever. Write a daemon process that checks during boot for the presense of the box - if it's found it enables those functions, if not runs the program that talks to emplode. You could add all kinds of options through this break out box - it would really give developers something to write against. You could even set it up as a serial pass-through so you could plug another serial device into it downstream - like a GPS. Having outputs and inputs to the empeg would make it so much more flexible...
9) A orange front panel that would match the color of my BMW's interior gauges.

Probably more but those are the ones that come to mind after a weekend of driving with my unit.

Cheers,

=-Clarke

_______________________________
List 351, empeg 00045, 10gb, Amber

To add to this, It would be great to have a docking unit/dongle so that we can
Hook up an auxiliary input, say a set of microphones and do acoustic analysis using the visualization
Plug for an antenna (like the connector found on the back of Radios/TV's, F-connector I think it is called) so that we can use the radio outside of the car.

Kamau Wanguhu
kamau@borgcube.com

A lot of good ideas on the initial posting. please add my votes to the BMW-orange display as option, and the suggestion on powering on in mute, and increasing until power at turnoff is brilliant (and should be easy ;-)