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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

On a personal note: I tried SCRED and it is a great way of managing expenses in a low-profile way. Give it a try!

Peter Distol was so kind as to explain how the technology works and also elaborate on the potential uses:

Click on the image to see the showcase, it is roughly 17 megs in size.

And, as an extra treat, here is a short clip showcasing the actual multi-touch technology, dubbed with a very special quote:

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

At first sight, this may look like an install process gone sour (and in fact, it did take longer than it should have), but what is interesting, is the way Microsoft notifies the user:

Sorry, this is taking a little longer than expected. Please bear with us just a few more minutes.

Simple, yet powerful and even better: they use the same simplistic thinking to describe the various other utilities that are available, summing up their respective functions in a short sentence.

Nothing world breaking of course, but not bad by any definition.