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On October 25th, 2008, Gabriel McIntyre of Mobuzz fame and former colleague from my time at XOLO.TV, held a party to celebrate his 33rd birthday.

As always, the XOLO people prove that they all, are wells of information, wisdom and, most importantly, inspiration.

One of Gabe’s inspirational quotes got me thinking and I thought that it would be worth sharing with a bigger audience:

As you are walking through life, with a big ice cream cone in your hand; tasty chocolate, juicy strawberry or delicious mango - whatever your flavor is - you suddenly happen to step in dog poop.

So now you got dog poop on your shoe and you have a decision to make: you can either concentrate on the dog poop on your shoe and then, at the same time, have that beautiful ice cream melt all over your hand and simply see it disappear.

Or, you decide to screw the dog poop on your shoes, and keep on walking and enjoy your nice, tasty, juicy and delicious ice cream cone.

The morale of the story, should be quite obvious: life, at every turn, always presents you with two choices: either dog poop or ice cream cone.

Pick the right one.

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.

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.

Kristoffer Lawson, CEO of SCRED, a financial management application, took the time to answer some questions about his likes and dislikes as far as the web is concerned:

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!