Those of you who have been following my blog closely (even those of you who don’t read Hebrew), know that there’s one particular feature of Windows 7 which I was overtly excited about. That feature is the much anticipated and eventually disappointing “Device Stage”.

Device Stage was supposed to be this window that pops up when you connect a device to your computer. Any device. The Window’s icon would be a photo-realistic icon of that device, and the stage would allow you to sync files, see battery and memory status, and even upgrade firmware and change ringtones. All in a built-in, 1st party, OS based unified interface. Sounds great, right? Finally, no more lousy 3rd party software that keeps crashing, no more compatibility issues, just one big unified bonanza of… unification.

The Rise and Fall of “Device Stage”

  When the Windows 7 Beta 1 was out back in January, I roamed around a bit. Back at the time, the only device I could get Device Stage to launch for was my Nokia N95 8GB (post is in Hebrew), but even that had limited functionality – media transfer mostly. Around the internet I found several people who have had some luck with some other devices, but not much more than myself. On every release since then to date, the feature was completely missing. No matter how I tried to connect my devices, device stage would not launch. I addressed Microsoft developers with this issue early on (around Beta 2), and they said that when Windows 7 launches (November 22nd), the Device Experiences as they call them would be ‘activated’.

November has seen come and gone, and Device Stage is mostly non-existing. If you try to Google search it, most results are from January 2009 or even October 2008. So where did it go?

Romancing the Vendors

While as a whole Windows 7 is a great success on many aspects, “Device Stage” is a failure. It’s not that the platform isn’t good, it’s just that Microsoft should have anticipated it’s reception (or rather lack there-of) better, and ‘convinced’ the hardware manufacturers (“OEMs” or Vendors henceforth) to use this great platform to unify device integration with the Windows operating system (heck, if they could be convinced to use the same power/data connector for all future devices, why the heck not a single software synchronization platform?)

OEM Vendors, however, are particularly strong-headed when it comes to software. Most of them don’t want to let go of content control, and would rather use their own 3rd party software rather than Microsoft’s unified platform. Back in August 2009 I anticipated this failure, and I even approached some Microsoft personnel regarding this issue, and they all assured me that Microsoft are working closely with OEMs on this, and that once Windows 7 hits retailers, we’ll start seeing Device Stage experiences all around.

Bollocks!

When Windows 7 hit retail back in November I started plugging in my devices and found no sign of Device Stage anywhere. For weeks there was nothing, until Microsoft released a small update via Windows Update which gave it’s own devices (Mice and Keyboards mostly) some much needed experiences. But that was pretty much it.

Getting a new device – even a Windows Mobile operated one, to show up in the “Devices and Printers”, not to mention getting a Device Stage experience – is so rare it’s become a hunting sport on the internet. With the notable exception of most Sansa products and a very few and specific cameras and printers – hardly any devices use this feature.

It’s been several months now, and still nothing from neither Microsoft nor OEMs regarding Device Stage support. I hooked up some of my devices, and here’s all it gave me:

For the record, the devices I connected are:

• Nokia N95 8GB
• Canon PowerShot SX200 IS
• HP iPaq rx5940 (Windows Mobile 5.0)

And some other devices I’ve tried with no success:

• Cowon iAudio I7
• Nokia E71
• Nokia N96
• HTC MyTouch 3G

And several others I can’t remember at the time.

Notable exceptions were any and all SanDisk products (with the Media Players having full experiences, and the storage devices having realistic icons only), and an Archos 5 PMP (with an icon only, no stage).

And still the biggest irony remains – Windows Mobile based devices still require Windows Mobile Device Center (à la Vista) and do not work with Device Stage, and there’s literally no online coverage of this feature working with anything past January 2009. Meh.

Still early, but a bit too late…

People who know me know I’m a big Microsoft defender, but even I can see that they really screwed the pooch with this one. Why develop a platform as rich in possibilities and as comfortable to use as Device Stage if hardly anyone gets to use it to its full extent? I’ve given them a couple of months before ‘officially’ declaring “Device Stage” a failure, and some might argue that it’s a bit too early, but more devices were compatible with Device Stage in Beta 1 (exactly a year ago) than today – two whole months after launch.

Windows 7 reception into the market is in full swing and the current months are crucial for it’s over-all integration into the computer world. Having Device Stage fully working at launch would have made a huge improvement even at that, since it’s a very ‘front-on’ feature that catches your attention as soon as you can use it.

And while Windows 7 is good enough to attract new customers anyway (especially since everyone is so anti-Vista, rightfully so or not), Device Stage would have been a vast addition to the ‘landscape’ of Windows 7 (I almost called it “the vista of Windows 7”).

Hopefully this situation will be rectified soon, before “Device Stage” joins OneNote and Windows Live Photo Gallery in the place where great software goes to die alone and un-heard of.

Living in Israel, for years I’ve been living a lie. As you may or may not know, the broadcasting standard here is the same as Europe: PAL.

PAL is a broadcasting standard for analogue European televisions, VCRs, DVDs, game consoles, etc. ‘Broadcasting Standard’ is the definition of the analogue stream which is translated to the color separation method, the resolution, and the frame rate used by the broadcaster or device.

Most of the content in Israel comes from America, which uses NTSC – a different (and some would say inferior) broadcasting format. But you see, NTSC broadcasts at 23.976 frames per second, while PAL broadcasts at 25 frames per second. To broadcast American shows in Israel (or Europe for that matter), the content has to be converted from NTSC to PAL – which means the frame rate has to be accelerated. In that process, a most peculiar thing happens: the content is not only a tad bit faster, but the audio is also a bit higher-pitched.

Most people never even notice it, but I’ve always felt something was off. In later years, as I bought or downloaded soundtracks to shows  I watched a lot and had memorized by heart, the show tunes had suddenly become strange and unfamiliar. I thought I was just imagining it, but after listening to the soundtracks for a while, I was certain that it was different than the aired version. At first I thought the show runners were simply ‘speeding things up’ by small percentages to gain more air time and squeeze more content in, but I didn’t give it much thought.

It wasn’t until online content became more wide-spread and shows started being available for download that I noticed it was something global. All shows sounded different on American television. People’s voices were lower, show tunes were on a different key altogether, and it seemed as if everything was in a much slower, lower-pitch.

It was especially noticeable on shows where the theme is played over and over again, like in Two and a Half Men or Scrubs. Two and a Half Men especially is a show that repeatedly plays the show’s main tune over and over again, and it’s harmony is almost a trademark. After watching 6 seasons of the show on television, I downloaded the first episode of the 7th season and thought to myself “That’s strange, they changed the tune – it’s lower pitched”. But it was too strange – it wasn’t just a different pitch, it was different altogether, but somehow the same.

It was then that it hit me – that every single show tune I’ve ever heard on television,  every single song, every piece of music – it was all a lie! It was all converted from NTSC, which meant it was sped up a bit to fit PAL’s faster frame rate! All the show tunes, all the soundtracks, even characters’ voices – they were all off! They were higher than they originally were supposed to be!

I bet a lot of people noticed it too, but never knew to put their finger on it. Or maybe they did, and didn’t know why it was so. Now that I know, I surely do feel stupid. But hey, not everybody knows the difference between PAL and NTSC also comes into play in speed. I wonder if that’s why “45 minute shows” take only 42 minutes. We’ve been time robbed!
But at least we have less flickering.

I mean really? Come on! Enough with the ______ over ______ flight games, already!

This one goes out to the entire team at the Microsoft Windows Beta team, and specifically Wendy who spearheaded the community aspects of the Beta program, making it an awesome program to participate in.

I was lucky enough to be randomly selected (from a bunch of guys who answered the Printing Management Service survey) to receive a bunch of gifts from Wendy and the Microsoft team, and here they are:

All the stuff together

Again, with labels:

Again, from a higher angle:

And now, to close-ups:

Ok, I’m not sure how they call this in English, but then again, from the height of my age (kidding) I don’t even remember the Hebrew name. I just remembered I had those as a kid in Kansas when I was three years old, except that the ones I had weren’t as cool:

The ergonomic pen, the USB-Powered Fish tank and the Frisbee took some trial and error to figure out., but they’re cool! The fish-tank is especially cool, being a ‘live light and water show’. My cats are gonna LUV this!

The next item is a multi-functional pen. You read it right – multifunctional. It’s a pen, but it’s also a bobble-head, and an LCD monitor anti-static dust brush. Sweet – except that it won’t stay standing up, the vacuum thingy is a bit dry, but it’s nothing a bit of water that dripped off the fish tank can’t fix.

The next couple of items I couldn’t quite figure out, so I had to have Wendy explain them to me :-P 
I must be dead inside :-|

First is this spidery sticky thing. Basically, you throw it at anything like you would a Ninja star, and it stick to it. Sweet:

The rocket kept me feeling a bit stupid, as I had to have Wendy explain it to me, and I figured out how cool it was too late to use it against my co-workers. Anyway, I shot it at my cat several times and he played around with it, but every time I tried to take his photo while he was playing with it he just ran off (if you have a cat, you know how nearly impossible it is to get them to pose – they do what THEY want, when THEY want it). This is the best I could get:

And this is it. I wanted to take a photo with me in the T-shirt, but it’s a bloody 35 degrees Celsius (that’s 95 Fahrenheit!) and the T-Shirt is long sleeved and 100% ‘ultra’ cotton, so ….. computer says no.

That’s it.

I’d like to thank Wendy again for this great pack of stuff, and to everyone else at the Beta team for a great run and what’s looking up to be the most exciting Windows release since ol’ Bill debuted Win95 (I know, they say that about every release, but this one really has a good vibe about it).

Keep up the good work, and thank you for allowing us to take part in Windows history.

See you all at the Windows 8 Beta,

-Elad