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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.

Tijs Vrolix:

Click on the image to see the interview, it is roughly 6 megs in size.

Dorien Aerts:

Click on the image to see the interview, it is roughly 4 megs in size.

Bart Gysens:

Click on the image to see the interview, it is roughly 7 megs in size.

Nele Vaesen:

Click on the image to see the interview, it is roughly 7 megs in size.

Stijn Janssen:

Click on the image to see the interview, it is roughly 2 megs in size.

Setting up an (un)conference means a lot of work, lots of stress and, up until the point where it is actually over: one big headache and no matter how well you plan for contingencies, things can still go south really quick.

Dorien Aerts however, managed to pull it all off, with great results. I sat down with her during the (un)conference and talked about what the mobile Webcamp actually is and, more importantly: what her expectations were:

Click on the image to see the interview, it is roughly 9 megs in size.

Alright so, The Next Web is all about, no pun intended: the next web, which, basically, comes down to web 2.0 technology.

One of the presentations during the conference highlighted some features of web 3.0 (and, incidentally: web 4.0) and while most of them where rather far-away, one technology stuck with me: Natural Language Search.

Imagine my luck, when I found someone who worked with said technology: Marcel Smit works for Q-Go, a profitable natural language search company with a huge client base (in excess of fifty million) and very useful technology.

They say that one should keep the best for the last and while I am not sure if this is the best interview of all, it certainly was the one I enjoyed taping the most. Why? Because I love the possibilities this technology brings:

Click on the image to see the interview, it is roughly 20 megs in size.

During the third edition of the The Next Web conference, I had the good luck of meeting two recruits, Stefan Silke and Rachid El Matili, from The White Door recruitement agency.

Now, before you skip this video, let me tell you that any (cliche) prejudices you might have are totally ungrounded, at least, as far as these two guys go. Both Stefan and Rachid seem like the kind of people you want to work with when you are looking for a job, but please, see for yourself:

Click on the image to see the showcase, it is roughly 8 megs in size.

Click on the image to see the showcase, it is roughly 12 megs in size.