Um, totally stupid idea here, but I figured I'd at least mention it.

One thing I've always tried to do is figure out how to get the player to shuffle tunes into a pseudo-random mix taking tag information into account. I sort of have this now using some very twisted playlists, but I keep thinking of ways to make it a little better (i.e. don't play two slow songs in a row, don't play songs by the same artist back to back, favor certain artists more than others, etc.) Some of these I've been able to do allright with, but I still don't have it exactly right (nor will I ever). Now to what would be too cool:

Could there be way to install a user created program that selects songs and puts them into "ad hoc" playlists? I realize this wouldn't benefit many people (read: only me), but man it would be cool. I haven't even tried to write programs for Linux (Well one, but it was using Kylix which I don't think counts), much less the Empeg- though I am very familiar with C. Out of sheer desperation I wrote a program for Windows to do this sort of thing and it worked great, then I got my Empeg and stopped using my PC for playing MP3s. I realize how totally bizarre this idea is and I wouldn't even mention it with any other product.