kerimsatirli.com

Songs with powerful emotions seem to be the new rage around this part of the town and I for one do not mind at all. With the summer coming up at high speed, Colbie Caillat’s album Coco might just be what you are looking for, with a nice collection of touching songs.

Colbie is one of those artists that know how to leverage the 2.0 thing; this resulted in her being the number-one (unsigned) singer in her genre for more than four months - no small feat, that’s for sure.

With her father, Ken Caillat, record producer for, amongst others, Fleetwood Mac and Mirage, she has the right backing that great but unknown artists need in this business to succeed.

And succeed she does, with chart breakers that hit #1 in (very) short time spans in more than one market, Colbie apparently is able to capture the essence of what the audience is looking for, and, in fact, her voice has something so appealing to it, that even Jason Mraz decided to record a track with her.

And that brings me to my next topic: Jason Mraz, too, has just released a new album, called “We Sing, We Dance, We Steal Things” and it shows that Mr. A-Z has the guts to try new things, because this album, style-wise, is much unlike his older albums, and I mean that in a positive way.

Coyotes, for example, sounds very much like an extended and improved version to the second part of “Song for a Friend” and if there is one song that kicked butt on previous albums, it certainly was “Song for a Friend”.

Coyotes is not the only track that sounds great though, “Only Human” and “I’m Yours” are Mraz’ way of sharing a lovely stories with his fans, both with that distinctive Mr. A-Z sound.

In closing, I can say that both artists are definitely worth checking out, if not for their recent successes, then for the lyrics they write, lyrics with meaning.

Oh and on a related note: Happy Birthday Colbie :)

Let me tell you a story: a couple of years ago, back when I was still living in Austria, I discovered an application, called Trillian, a multi-network chat application that just worked.

Trillian was (and still is being) designed by Pak-Kei Mak, better known as kid, who, back then, was “just” a student who won a design competition.

Trillian’s design appealed to me; it was new, it was non-standard, it carried the mood factor and it had emoticons that, to this very day, make me smile (or frown, depending on the selected emotion).

Kid, besides being a kick-ass designer, also did some PHP coding on the side and created a script that would index a directory in the same (visual) style as Windows XP, and I loved that, as did Ben.

In fact, we enjoyed the greatness of said script so much that we basically created a clone of the whole indexer, distributed it amongst friends and made a few people happy with it, oh, and Ben and me close contacts of each other, often conversing long hours on the most interesting (or the most ridiculous) topics.

Fast-forward to January 2007, when I was invited to the Trillian Astra Alpha-testing cycle and decided, on a whim, to start a conversation with Kid, after all, this was my chance to talk to one of those that I admire.

One conversation quickly became many, admiration was joined by respect, advice, dare I say: (online) friendship? In any case, we felt that we struck a note with each other and we got along very well, so well, that Kid and I started working together.

At first, our collaborations only included brainstorms on various things, basically toying with ideas and sharing some dreams with each other, up until a point where I asked Kid to step up to the plate and design something for me. His work turned out great (more on that in another post) and we decided to continue our collaboration in the future.

A couple of weeks ago, when my first internship was entering the home lane, I had to make a decision: would I go for the medium or big company with the well-known name and earn a few pesetos but probably do stuff I have been doing the past couple of years, or would I go for the company that is not even a company but much rather an idea.

In my (professional) life, most of my choices have been about doing the thing that I am the most passionate about, I am interested in learning new skills and hone old(er) skills much more than I am in making a big buck (at least, right now) and so I went for the idea that I am passionate about.

From June 3rd, 2008 up until, at least, sometime mid-August 2008, Pak-Kei and me will be on a journey, a journey of exploration. We will be battling against many of the same things that (web) start-ups have to deal with and if bad meets worse on the way and they manage to get along well enough, we might end up with nothing but great experiences.

And in fact, the few people I discussed this with mostly told me, often in very specific terms to drop the idea of makin’ a big buck and just go work for an established company and be done with it.

While I value the input of the people around me, I believe that the following quote sums it up best:

He who tries and fails is wiser (and happier) than he who does not try out of fear of failure

And that is why I am going.

Seventeen weeks ago, on January 19th, I started my first ever internship, at a company called XOLO.TV.

My college’s internship period officially did not start for another three weeks, but that did not bother me, I wanted the experience and I was not afraid of investing my free days in order to get that experience.

Now, seventeen weeks later, I have about seven weeks more experience than most of my co-students and am leaving XOLO.TV with a whole treasure-chest filled to the brim with new knowledge, good stories and new contacts.

It is said that all good things must come to an end, no matter if you want them to or not and In a way I am sad that my internship is over, for I will surely miss the guys (and gals) from XOLO.TV.

Without trying to come off as being too emotional, I think it is safe to say that I did not only find (business) contacts at XOLO.TV, but rather friends.

The past months, starting with the, by now, famous, New Year’s Party, Video Vortex, the actual start of my internship, Paaspop and The Next Web 2008 it has been a fun-filled ride for sure.

GabeB, GabeMac, Marc, Paul, Stephan, Tatjana, Walter, Wiendelt - you guys rock and I thank you from the bottom of my heart for making this internship experience as great as it was.

Let’s be honest: being an up-and-coming artist sucks. It generally takes ages until you get noticed, if at all, and with the rate of new songs / albums being released, many songs do not receive the airtime they deserve. bands do not get the airtime they deserve.

Many people who do not use, or even know of, alternative means of discovering music, such as Last.fm, Magnatune and others, generally just know the “common charts”, so I decided to share three unknown, yet high-quality artists with you:

Number One spot, withouth a doubt is A Fine Frenzy. There are only a handful of albums where I can say that every song rocks, and this one definitely meets the criteria. Sudol’s songs are powerful, visual, lovely and insanely touching.

In a time where artists try to impress with naked bodies, big cars and one scandal after the other, Alison Sudol manages to captivate the essence of what good music should be, of what good music is, go check it out!

Kate Voegele, yet another young, female, singer-songwriter definitely gets the second place in this listing. Her album, Don’t look away, contains nearly an hour of sing-out-loud-songs that will cheer up just about any day.

Voegele’s songs pack strong lyrics and she delivers them with an equally great voice (and great video clips), which gets a definite thumbs-up from me.

The Hush Sound, an alternative rock band from Chicago gets a deserved third place for their Wine Red, from the album Like Vines.

The album has a number of great songs and thanks to the refreshing sound the replayability is quite high too; compared to most other artists, this, once again, becomes something special.

Like these suggestions? There is more, to be found here, or just check out Summer of 98, by The Secret Handshake.

For the record: yes, the title of this post (-series?) is very much inspired by the Why aren’t you wearing this? section of Styledash. Styledash showcases great, yet unknown products that you ought to be wearing, go check ‘em out!

Tijs Vrolix used the mobile Webcamp to launch his newest brainchild, called Twistory and managed to gain some nice link love from a number of international blogs.

Before the news broke though, I had the opportunity to sit down with Tijs and get the super-quick lowdown on what Twistory actually is:

Click on the image to see the interview, it is roughly 5 megs in size.