Vampire Weekend consists of Ezra Koenig, Rostam Batmanglij, Chris Tomson, and Chris Baio. They met while going to Columbia University - and seem to be genuine ‘Ivy Leaguers’. They definitely have style as well - they were featured in the recent GQ issue, and look very preppy in that shoot. They are self-proclaimed specialists in “Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa”, “Upper West Side Soweto”, “Campus”, and “Oxford Comma Riddim” - and one listen shows you just how musically talented they are (if you check the album insert, they all play multiple instruments).

It’s hard to choose favourites on this CD - almost every track is amazing. That being said, my current faves would have to be: Oxford Comma, Campus and M79. Listen to them below. For more info on Vampire Weekend, check out their official site. If you’d like to purchase a copy of their album (which I highly recommend you do), it should be available at all major retailers, both in store and online. Remember….make this weekend a Vampire Weekend!

Vampire Weekend - Oxford Comma

Vampire Weekend - M79

Vampire Weekend - Campus

Below I’m going to provide you with some listening goodness - a few Christmas themed songs I’d like to let you listen to. Hopefully you’ll enjoy them as much as I do. I’ve also included some background info on the bands/songs below, mostly courtesy of wikipedia.

The Killers - A Great Big Sled (feat. Toni Halliday)

“A Great Big Sled” is a song by Las Vegas-based rock band The Killers. It was recorded in mid-November 2006 with record producer Alan Moulder as a one-off track and the band’s Christmas 2006 single. Moulder’s wife Toni Halliday, the former lead vocalist of Curve, features on backing vocals.

The song was released December 5, 2006 (2006-12-05), as a download from the iTunes Store. All of the proceeds from this song went to AIDS charities as part of Bono’s RED campaign. A music video was released for the single, containing “candid” clips of the band members participating in various holiday celebration.

The Killers - Don’t Shoot Me Santa

“Don’t Shoot Me Santa” is a song by Las Vegas-based rock band The Killers. The song was released November 27, 2007 (2007-11-27), as a digital download. All of the proceeds from this song will go to AIDS charities as part of Bono’s RED campaign. It is The Killers’ second Christmas download single following 2006’s “A Great Big Sled”.

Bennie K - The Christmas (ザ★クリスマス)

BENNIE K is a J-Urban female duo that consists of rapper CICO and vocalist YUKI, both of whom love American hip-hop music. They met while YUKI was in Los Angeles undergoing voice training. They made their debut in January, 2001 with the single Melody, released on the For Life Music label. This track is off their fourth album, Japana-Rhythm.

Merry Christmas and enjoy!

Wishing you and your loved ones a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year - filled with the best of everything!

As this year comes to a close, I can’t help but notice how fast it went by! It seems to me as if it were only a few months ago that I was writing a similar Christmas greeting - and yet it has been exactly 12 months! 2007 has been a great year! I’ve been in contact with many of you much less than I would have liked - life has been busy. I’ll try and provide you all with a quick re-cap of my year below:

In May I completed my 2nd year at Ryerson University in Toronto (I’m taking a Bachelor of Commerce, specializing in Information Technology). As soon as exams were done, I started a four month co-op term (kind of like an internship), working for CIBC (one of Canada’s top five banks) in their Telecom Services department. I was a part of their Real Time Communications project – which involved the migration of the Bank’s voice networks to a Voice-over -IP infrastructure.

When my term at CIBC came to a close, I took a quick breather – in Jamaica! After a week of fun and sun – I returned home and began my second co-op term, this time with ExxonMobil (the biggest of the six oil ’supermajors’ – and world’s largest company by revenue, to those Canadian folks that aren’t familiar, they own Esso/Imperial Oil), in their Voice Services - Controls department. As a member of Controls, I was part of an international team responsible for establishing and maintaining adequate controls of the company’s voice networks, assets and related management processes. I had an amazing time with Exxon, learning so much in the process!

Well, having finished my term with Exxon this past week, I now have a few weeks holiday, before going back to school in January. I hope you all had a great year as well!

Take care and keep in touch!

Warmest Regards,
Marcus

Unified Communications?
What is Unified Communications (UC)? You’ve probably heard this word thrown around a lot lately, but what does it mean? Well, simply put, Unified Communications (UC) is the integration of the many disparate communications systems, media, applications and devices. In almost every office, a clear division can be observed and experienced, especially between what can be done on the phone, and what can be done on the computer. We’ve all experienced this division, and it’s definitely not a good thing. Having to dial into voice mail is always a pain (not just for users, but for the help desks as well - password resets are quite common). Not being able to see when someone else is on the phone is also an annoyance - in fact, there are so many issues - both large and small - which are a result of this division. As Gartner states, UC’s largest value is it’s ability to reduce “human latency” in business processes, and that’s definitely true.

Microsoft’s Platform
I’ll break down some of the main areas that benefit the most from this UC platform, but first I’d just like to quickly explain how the platform works, and what is required.

Microsoft’s UC platform is powered by their Office Communications Server (OCS). This server software is highly scalable, with different configurations allowing anywhere from 5,000 to 105,000 users. The actual architecture is very flexible, allowing for any number of configurations to exist, and extra features can be easily added through additions of servers. The basic features offered by OCS are enterprise IM (Instant Messaging), online presence, audio/video conferencing and web conferencing, all on one platform. OCS is connected, by way of a “mediation” server, to either the company’s IP-PBX’s or legacy PBX’s, and as a result, provides CDR, IVR and a plethora of other features. A company can still reap the benefits of VoiP using a legacy PBX system, as OCS provides “software-powered VoiP” out of the box. Active directory is a required component of the platform, and allows for very easy management of services (no more command line - settings have full user interfaces).

Microsoft Office Communicator is used for the client side of things, and is available in PC, hard-phone, web and mobile versions, allowing for continuity and ease of use across any platform and any location (due to advanced protocols, VPN connection is no longer needed for users to check mail or make calls from outside the office). The client is integrated with all of Microsoft’s office programs, adding more value to the user’s experience. Click to call, like the implementations seen in most current VoiP roll outs, is also very easy to use, and can be used from within the majority of Microsoft applications (if you are editing a document for example, you can see who wrote/worked on it, and click to call them).

Online Presence
While most companies already have presence displayed through Instant Messaging (IM), the information provided is usually very limited, and unfortunately quite useless. In Lotus Notes for example, while Same Time IM allows for a user to select their status (Online, Away, DND…), this status is completely manual, and its effectiveness requires a certain level of diligence by the user. The presence available through Microsoft’s UC however, is vastly more useful. A user’s presence can still be manually selected (so, you can select DND if you are really busy), but now it takes the onus off the user, and handles it transparently.

With this enhanced online presence, a user’s status is changed depending on what they are doing, or what they have scheduled. If a user is on the phone, that will be displayed as their status, so anyone who would have been trying to contact them, would wait, or choose another type of communication method. If a user has a meeting scheduled in their outlook calendar, that info is fed into the live presence. No longer will it just say “in a meeting” but it will provide the details (no need to worry about privacy, the amount of detail shown to users depends on their “class” - team members for example, can view everything, while a regular company employee can only see what you want them to), without requiring the user to enter these manually.

If a users status is set to DND (do not disturb), an instant message sent from a regular employee would be delivered as an e-mail, and calls would go directly to voice mail. If a team member was trying to contact that user though, the IM would be sent, minimized, and the notification of an incoming call would also appear on the users screen, minimized.

By leveraging the live presence offered by Microsoft’s OCS in combination with Exchange Server, companies can significantly improve their personnel’s “communication latency”. The days of “phone tag” and IM’s of “can I call you” are coming to an end. This feature rich presence isn’t only limited within a company, but can also be “federated” to any partner companies, adding even more value.

Visual Voice Mail
Voice mail has been, and is largely still, unintuitive and primitive. You have to dial in to listen, you can’t “see” who left the messages or what their online status might be. Users also have to remember yet another password to access their messages, something which often helps increase support tickets (password resets). With Microsoft’s OCS, voice mail becomes much more user friendly and powerful - it becomes more like e-mail. When a user receives a voice mail, they are notified right on their desktop, and receive that voice mail in their e-mail inbox, just like a regular e-mail. They can listen to it right at their desktop if they like, and they can see who sent it, and prioritize their messages. This experience is not limited to your PC, but can also be experienced via mobile devices (like the Apple iPhone’s visual voice mail), or through a users OCS Edition phone (these phones are colour and touch screen, very nice).

Conferencing
Conferencing is probably one of the most used and most critical service voice systems provide. With UC, conferencing has the opportunity to become more engaging, easier to use and more flexible. Currently in most offices, if one wishes to have a conference with more than three people, a conference bridge must be booked. While this booking process can usually be done online, it has to be done well in advance, or else you must call to request. This simply is not convenient for users, as conferences aren’t always a planned matter, and they shouldn’t be. Let’s say a user is talking to someone else, and they want to bring in two more people into the conversation, essentially making it a conference, they can’t do this currently. With UC, regular calls can be easily escalated into full scale audio conferences, just with the click of a button - it’s instant. This also applies to video and web conferences as well. These features, and more allow conferences to be more interactive and more spur of the moment. With the use of improved codecs, bandwidth is rarely an issue, allowing users to work from wherever they are, and have perfect clarity of voice and video.

CDR
The OCS also has built in call detail recording (CDR), which can log and archive IM’s, conferences (audio, video and web) and regular voice calls. This means that you won’t need another device to do this, although for storage, you’ll require an Archiving server. Having this integrated, advanced CDR capability, allows companies to more easily meet their corporate compliance requirements, as well as act as a “library” for users (what I mean by this, is that for audio/video conferences, if a user was unable to attend one, they could simply replay it at a later date).

IVR
IVR can also be implemented, although for the most features, Exchange would also need to be used. A user can call in to access and listen to their e-mail, calendar information and contacts. What I found really interesting was the demo they conducted for this feature. The demonstrator called in to his office, was voice authenticated (no passwords necessary, biometrics are used instead) and was able to ask about his schedule for the following day, and have an appointment delayed by 35 minutes (all by voice - when the meeting was delayed, the automated voice assured him that all invitees had been notified of the change). He was also able to ask the “virtual assistant” to call connect him to a colleague, all without the need to press a single button.

Closing Thoughts
While it looks very promising and exciting, Microsoft’s Unified Communications platform isn’t without its drawbacks, and it’s definitely not for everyone. Firstly, in order to provide all of the fancy “presence” features it requires the use of Microsoft Exchange Server, which isn’t used in all enterprises. Secondly, the technology is still fairly new, and even though it has been implemented - and successfully at that, it is still in its infancy – and therefore vulnerabilities and threats are not fully known. Thirdly, rolling out a unified communications platform requires a lot of commitment, and more importantly a need for what it offers. Do all companies require presence, visual voice mail, click to call and all of those other features? They could probably use them - but they definitely don’t need them. These types of features would provide the most value to large, multinational corporations, where teams are virtual, and it’s hard to have that “connected” feeling. Another important point to note, is that there are competing platforms available, from the likes of IBM and Cisco.

While I myself saw this platform as being full of great features, that make sense and would be very useful, I think most companies will phase these in slowly. While we will eventually see all of these features in play in single systems, it’ll be a while before the majority of companies go with the full solution, especially if the company’s core competencies aren’t in IT.

I’d like to congratulate Microsoft and its partners, for launching a complete, full featured and valuable platform. Adoption rates will eventually skyrocket I have no doubt, but for large corporations, I see this taking a little longer. The platform will mainly cater towards niche markets (IT centric, global firms) and companies who are planning major upgrades in its initial phases. I will definitely be watching this solution closely, and look forward to having a “hands-on” experience with it.

To those unfamiliar, this is a tribute to guitarist/composer/producer Domenic Troiano, who passed away in May 2005 at the age of 59. It was the 2nd annual tribute in his honour, taking place at the Palais Royale, featuring many performances from both family and friends.

Edit: Well, over one year later, I’m back at it! New theme, new gallery and more to come soon! My last post mentioned I was busy with school, well now it’s work - but I’ll try to make some time over the holidays to get everything 100% complete! Check back soon for updates

The flight took around 3.5 hours (to get from Toronto to Cancun) and it went by quickly. The movie they played was King Kong, which I saw already, but ended up watching again. It’s a good movie, but I don’t think it lived up to all the hype, at least not for me. then we met up with the bus that was to take us to our resort, the Gran Bahia Principe. The drive took around 1.5 hours, and we couldn’t really see much because by that time it was dark outside.

We stopped off at the Gran Palladium Resort first, as some of the people on our bus were staying there. It looked like a nice place as well, though it was too dark to see much of it at the time. A few minutes later we arrived at the Gran Bahia Principe resort, the one we were staying at. The resort is partitioned into four different sections, each with their own lobby and respective facilities; the Tulum, Akumal, Premiere and Coba. Ours was the Tulum.

The Gran Bahia Principe Tulum was in one word, great! It’s an all-inclusive package, so you get all the food and drink you could wish for, plus access to all their facilities. Our room was on the ground floor of one of the many (there must be enough to house several thousand guests) villas, had two double beds and all the rest you’d expect. One of the many, many pools in the resort was just a minute walk away from our room, though I actually never went swimming in one of them, as I much prefer the Ocean. The beach was just a little further than the pool, and the water was great! It’s the Caribbean sea, so you really can’t get much better. In our area it was a little rocky, though just a short treck down the beach it was perfect. The temperature was also perfect, so nothing to complain about at all, I went in the water every day!


The food was excellent! The Tequila restaurant was just as far as the pool, and we usually went there in the mornings to get some food. Whether you felt like having some fruit, eggs, meat or pancakes, it was there. I usually got a custom omelet, some fruit, potatoes, bacon or what ever else they featured, it was different every day, so you never got tired of the food. For lunches we either went back to the Tequila, or went to the main restaurant adjacent to the Tulum lobby, which was massive and had absolutely everything (both were buffet style). We also went to that for dinner several times, and it was great (the custom pasta’s were a sweet part of it!).

We also had three a la carte dinners, one at the Tequila, one at the Don Pablo and one at the El Pescadore. They were all very well done, and I enjoyed the Don Pablo best, it was the “gourmet restaurant” (the tequila was, you guessed it, Mexican, and the El Pescadore, seafood).

In addition to food, drinks were also extremely plentiful. Whether it was a cerveza with your lunch, some vino tinto with your dinner, or a shot of tequila just before bed, they had it all.

We enjoyed the facilities a lot, taking advantage of all they had to offer. We played tennis on the Wimbledon style grass courts (in the hot heat!), went biking around the resort, went kayaking in the ocean, and just relaxed on the beach. I really liked the sea kayaking; especially when there were big waves, riding them in was so fun (though you get flipped over quite a bit). I actually saved a girl from Canada when I was kayaking :). She had been snorkeling, and was pulled out by the current, and couldn’t get back. Luckily, I was out there, and I saw that she needed help, so I paddled over and let her grab onto my kayak. I then brought her back in to shore, which took quite a long time (kayak was off balance, it was rough in the water, and I didn’t want to hurt her with the paddle). It was really cool though! We talked for a while, as I paddled in, and it turns out she’s from my country, Canada, but just at the other end, BC. She was really nice, and even offered to buy me a drink, but those are free ;). So yeah, got to play the hero for one day :D.

We went on two excursions, Coba Maya Village and Tulum. The first one took the whole day, as we went to the Coba Mayan ruins first, climbed the pyramid there, which is the tallest in the Yukaton peninsula (easy getting up, but a pain getting down!), then we visited a Mayan village. It was really interesting to see how they lived, and to see that even though they had next to nothing in terms of possessions, that they were all happy. We then went to lunch at a traditional Mexican restaurant which was nice, went shopping at a market for souvenirs and went to the cenote to take a refreshing swim! That was definitely welcomed, as the day was hot and dry. A cenote is an underground cave where you can swim. This area of Mexico is largely made up of limestone, and the water carves out these caves all over the place, very cool!

The second trip was to the Tulum Mayan ruins, which instead of being in the jungle like the ones in Coba, were on the coast. It was really nice, and definitely worth visiting! The Mayans were an amazing culture, so advanced for there time, and their legacy still stands there’s thousands of years later, amazing!

We met a wonderful couple from the UK on that first tour, and throughout our stay at the resort, we hung out with them on several occasions and had a great time. It was definitely a highlight of the trip, as they were really nice and great to talk with over a few drinks :). Thanks for the fun times Woody and Karen!

The weather was for the most part in the 30’s Celsius, sunny and breezy, which made for a splendid combination! The staff were all so nice, being mainly the native Mayans. When you walked by, they always were like “Ola!”, and all smiles. It was the same with all of the people there, the waiters, and everybody; it was really nice and welcoming. The seven days we stayed couldn’t have gone by faster, which was probably the only drawback of the vacation. The flight back went well, and the movie this time around was Last Holiday, which I had just watched the week before…So I just listened to music and slept most of the remaining time. When we got back to Canada, the weather, which had been really nice when we first left (albeit not nearly as nice as in Mexico), turned out to be cloudy, cold and rainy…great :(. Well, hopefully it improves soon!

So anyways, we had a great time, and would definitely like to go back some time! I’ve put together a gallery with all my pictures, so go check them out and tell me what you think.

This past week I’ve just been relaxing and hanging out for friends. I finally got to see a movie, after I don’t know how many months, and it was “The Sentinel“. I hadn’t heard of it before, and only decided to watch it because of the time it was playing and because the actors were all quite famous. I walked in expecting a cookie cutter action flick, but I left feeling very satisfied. Great movie, I’d recommend you go see it :).

I’m planning on travelling/working most of the summer, as it will be my last before co-op begins (and I’ll be left with no summers….). I’m leaving for my first trip of the summer tomorrow, the destination being Mexico! It will be a 7-day all-inclusive resort on the Mayan Riviera, so plenty to do and see! Should be tons of fun, I can’t wait!

For the past week or so, I’ve been looking into a digital camera to buy (I’ve been happy with my Fuji A310, but it’s getting old now). I settled on either the Canon SD700 IS or the Sony DSC-T30. They are both full- featured ultra-compacts, with all of the latest and greatest bells and wistles: huge LCD’s, OIS, 6-7MP’s, etc, etc. I was going crazy trying to decide which one was the best. They both had their strengths and weaknesses, and they both took amazing pictures! So….I finally decided on the Canon SD700 IS, and I think it was a great choice! The battery is still charging (just bought it), but I’m already very pleased with the size, look and build quality of this camera. I’ll be testing it out over the next week, and I’ll write up a review on it when I get back.

Speaking of writing, now that school is over for the year, I’ll start getting caught up on posting, I’ve just been too busy.

Anyways, all the best and see you all soon.
Marcus

Vista has been plagued by delays, so this isn’t really too much of a surprise. It may be good that they did delay it, as this means more time will be spent on the OS and its many features. Earlier this year, several key features of Vista had been removed in order to release it in a more timely manner, but at this point that shouldn’t be an issue any longer.

In order to reassure consumers who are looking to purchase a new PC, Microsoft has come up with the minimum hardware requirements for Vista Home (the most basic version of Vista). PC’s which meet the requirements will get a “Designed for Windows XP, Windows Vista Capable” sticker on them. So what are these requirements? Well, they’re nothing too demanding, most of you will probably easily be able to run Vista (albeit without all the fancy graphics). Here they are:

• Be able to competently run Windows XP
• A modern CPU
• A minimum of 512MB of RAM
• A DirectX 9 class graphics processor
• Optionally support Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM) to take advantage of Vista’s improved graphics

And if you do want to run Vista with all the extras (Aero, et al), you’ll need something like this:

• DirectX 9 class graphics hardware that supports WDDM and Pixel Shader 2.0
• A minimum of 32 bits per pixel
• Appropriate graphics memory for specified monitor resolutions expressed as total pixels (X dimension multiplied by Y dimension)
• Graphics memory bandwidth, as assessed by Windows Vista’s built in system assessment tool WinSAT.EXE, of at least 1,800MB/s at 1,310,720 pixels on a desktop and at the native resolution on a mobile PC

This is definitely a smart move on Microsoft’s part, as when the time comes, and users begin to hear about Vista, they’ll be able to easily upgrade. This will also prevent users from waiting to buy a new PC, as they can get one right now, one which will run Vista.

While Vista is looking very nice and boasts a lot of new features, I’m content with Windows XP for the moment, and can wait until it’s released.

Many feared that this was the end of Alienware as we know it, but Dell assured users that it would not interfere in Alienware at all, as it would be a “standalone unit”. Dell reaffirmed its commitment to their own line of high end PC’s, with the launch of the Dell XPS 600 Renegade, a $10,000 computer system targeted at gamers and enthusiasts. It comes fully loaded with NVIDIA’s Quad-SLI graphics, an overclocked Pentium 965 Extreme Edition @ 4.26 GHz and among other great components, their very own 30-inch 3007WFP LCD monitor. Other than Dell, who’s in the mood for buying?
Edit: Anyone who missed their chance to buy Dell’s XPS 600 Renegade is out of luck now, as the ultra high-end, limited edition PC has officially sold out. So, you’ll just have to consider spending your money elsewhere, or wait for the next model, did anyone say XPS 900 Renegade?