It has been a while since I updated my blog with, what I find, share-able posts. My life as a student can be quite hectic but now I found the time to concentrate on writing about a very fruitful period of my life; my internship with Touchnote.com.

After I left my previous internship earlier I gave myself 3 weeks to find a paid internship in London, else I’d go back to Holland to find one.

I applied to several paid internship jobs in London as web developer. A web dev agency was interested and Touchnote, which I found on GiveMeaStudent (disappeared all of a sudden).  It took me a few days to decide with which company I’d like to work with. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. In the end I chose Touchnote for it was closer to home (still quite far though), I enjoyed my communications with them, having a smaller team I expected a more personal approach. Touchnote was interested in meeting me so I arranged an interview asap.

My first English job interview

Obviously I had a horrible Dutch accent but my interview with Touchnote was very pleasant. I spoke with the CEO and the lead developer.  The chat with the lead developer was interestingly perfect! The type of questions asked by him gave me an idea of their way of working, professionalism and their knowledge regarding web development. What they could offer me was exactly what I was looking for! Now I just hoped that I could offer them what they were looking for. I was quite insecure to be honest. I had no portfolio to show that I am well or reasonable capable of using PHP, MySQL, CSS and HTML. I could only explain what I knew and did, what my experiences with PHP were sand what I wanted to learn.

After a week I heard the good news! I could stay in London!! Yeh.. now I couldn’t wait to get started.

The dev team and me

Feeling a bit insecure I hoped to be able to live up to their expectations. They sure lived up to mine. I got all the support I needed; during work and for school. I made some errors and felt very ashamed and I also made successes. The dev team was always open to my questions as well as to my suggestions. They were very clear in their expectations and in explaining different things. I could ask the same technical question like 3 times and still they wouldn’t be fed up with me

Due to my previous internship experience I actually expected not to be taken seriously because I was just an intern. To my surprise; my suggestions, ideas and opinions were taken seriously and I was more than just an intern.

I worked with new tools to help with the development of the website. I learned new coding tricks and more about Cake, JQuery and 3rd party API’s. I had the chance to apply my own SEO skills and on top of that I learned new, never heard of before, SEO strategies.

I tasted a bit of how the lead developer plans projects in an Agile, SCRUM, way; how to realistically estimate the time of each project. From start to finish I experienced how a lead developer manages it’s team and how he can get desired results from its team when time is limited. How to look at problems and how to try to tackle them. This is definitely something I’ll always take with me if I ever get a leading or managing role of any kind in my life. His managing capacities to me are a very important lessons, so is everyone else’s role within the company.

I’ll remember the deployment evenings/nights. The days working towards them were hard work but the deployments were always good fun and usually came with pizza or snacks as well

The rest of the Touchnote team

I am surprised how everyone in the company communicates very well and clearly. I think I always knew what everyone was up to, everyone was always well informed, we knew how the paths forward looked like, what the next steps were, what expectations are and no surprises other than good surprises. It is very fascinating and again very important entrepreneurial lessons for me. Examples of good behaviour is very important for my learning progression

Never was I asked/demanded to get coffee for the team never did I felt being treated as “the intern” or “the student”. Such a delight!

I was offered to stay after my internship but decided to go back home and continue school. It wasn’t an easy decision but school is something that has priority now. I just want to get over with it first.

Conclusion

I honestly could not have hoped for a better internship. I learned a lot; gained real practical experience with a professional company. It was fun and gave me more confidence in my role as web developer. Every person in the whole Touchnote team is very devoted to the company, hard working, professional, reasonable, fun, well mannered, respectful and friendly. What more does one need?

I sincerely hope that any future web dev intern will have similar positive experiences.

Thank you Touchnote Team!!

Side note to all students looking for internship in London

Key is to search well and thoroughly, apply to different internship jobs… It is possible to find decent, good and even paid internships if you are determined and know what you are looking for..don’t compromise in that! If I am able to accomplish what I was looking for then you sure can too.

My personal points of improvement

After this experience I thought of new challenges that I’d like to pursue.

Obviously some more web development skills; website architecture, JavaScript (or JS libraries), advanced CSS. I quite like to learn more about ZendFramework and more more hard core Linux commands!! That is so awesome.

Believe it or not. I quite like to be a (junior) project manager at least once in my life. For that I seriously need to work on my English communication skills; explaining technical situations to web novices at any time. Be able to clearly explain situations: what do I expect and what is happening, what do I do and what are my expectations.

I’d like to become more British in how I communicate so more British accent is coming! Bye bye Dutch accent.. Tot ziens!

More photo’s can be found on my Flickr account

Motorcycle licence in London works a bit different than in the Netherlands. There are different types and the basic one is the CBT (Compulsory Basic Training

With just a CBT you are allowed to ride a bike/scooter with restrictions. The CBT is a training day where you learn to control, make manoeuvres and ride the bike. The restrictions are max 125cc, you have to ride with L-plates, no Motorways.

As soon as I have the money, I’ll go for my full licence to get rid of the L-plates and maybe, just maybe buy a bigger bike. But for now I can not imagine selling this beauty for the next few years…

What can Touchnote do for us

Who doesn’t like to receive a personal card? Everyone likes to receive a greeting, anniversary, birthday, thank you, I love you or a “just to say hi” card from friends and family. Stores have racks full with cards you can choose from for plenty occasions. But it is now time for an other type of card, the delightful little Touchnote card!

Touchnote is all about personalising your card

Use any photo you have stored on your computer for your card. In the card creator you can also drag speechbubbles onto the photo to make it more personal. A few example cards using my own photos:

On the inside you can write your love message, greeting, thank you note, invitation or life story. Also unlimited smilies, hearts and mugshots with your webcam can be inserted into the inside of your card to compliment your message!

Don’t have photos on your computer anymore? An other key thing on Touchnote is that you can login into securely login into Facebook or Picasa. Choose a photo from one of your albums and personalise your card.

Touchnote is Web 2.0

Though people already start talking about Web 3.0, being a semantic and more personal way of experiencing the Internet, the Web 2.0 bubble is still present.

One of the key things of Web 2.0 is bridging the gap between the offline world and the online world, or standing inbetween these 2 worlds. So what place does Touchnote occupy in this Web 2.0 definition?

Well, lets see..

1. Online: You can use your own photo’s to create a personalised greeting, birthday, you name it card.
2. Offline: Create a personalised greeting, birthday, you name it card with one of the photo’s you take with you mobile phone.
3. Inbetween online and offline: This really is unique! Once you created and sent the card using your mobile phone (or online), it will be posted for you to anywhere in the world! How neat is that?

Go on and try it too! Check their website to see which mobile phone’s they currently support. There is also an online demo available. More support coming for other mobiles soon!

Note that the Touchnote for Mobile is the only Ovi Store app that ships a physical product.

Now you know what Touchnote is.. don’t be afraid to send a card yourself… click!

I know people from studios92 are reading with me and are following my every move on this. To those at studios92 who feel addressed: no worries, this will gradually reduce.

Sooow, what have I been doing in London since I left studios92 and started with Touchnote? An update for those who like to know..

I have done so many things but most of them I can not recollect at this very moment. Or some are too minor to mention separately in a heading like, drinking pints of beer..and Dutch beer. Dating a nice Chinese guy. Having Juud and His, and Jelmer visit me (not at the same time). Both surprised me with Dutch liquorice candy! Juud and His even surprised me with Lipton Morocco tea! Buying a very nice Spanish guitar for Rachel and teach her all I know so far. Drinking a lot of Cappuccino.

PHP UK Conference

How could I forget to mention in my previous post! I did not have time to write a review. But I totally enjoyed it! It was nice to meet new people. I also looked for companies that might take interns (me!). Collected a few business cards and off I went

I did wish there was more space in the smaller hall but other than that it was very very good.

Also very good to be away from studios92 and engage in real life.

Movies - Cinema’s .. YaYaY

I just can’t get enough of movies these days. Orange Wednesdays and student discount are the best! I am glad we can combine different things, whereas in Holland this is not possible.

I try to go to the cinema at least once a week. Movies I have seen this time…

• Star Trek (twice even) 8.5/10
• Wolverine 7/10
• The uninvited 6.5/10
• Knowing 6/10

Difference cinema Leeuwarden vs London

A note on how cinema’s differ from Leeuwarden and London. As soon as you pass by the cinema you will smell the lovely air of freshly popped popcorn with yummy butter/oil (whatever it is). The popcorn itself have 50% covered in the delicious butter and the other part is like the popcorn in London cinema’s.

I don’t know how Pathé (big Cinema chain in Holland) does it. The last time I visited Pathé was way too long. As far as I can remember, they don’t pop their popcorn freshly in the cinema.

I so miss the smell of freshly popped popcorn here, something that adds to the ‘experience’ of going to the cinema. I can remember that I even went to the cinema in Leeuwarden only to get the popcorn to eat at home

The chairs in London are obviously better. The chairs in Leeuwarden are too big for me. Pathé chairs are good for me too.

Finding a paid internship in London, UK

After I left studios92 it took me a few weeks to find a few companies for a job interview. I can remember that studios92 told me that internships in UK all are unpaid, which is why they don’t pay their interns either.

During my free weeks I have seen many many internship vacancies that prove otherwise. Yes there are some that don’t pay you but there are plenty who do pay.

When it comes to give away money for accommodation: It is better to find an paid or even unpaid internship in London and invest in renting a room in London than to work for studios92. The ROI for working in a real company is much bigger than working for studios92. It sure gives you more freedom!

I had an absolute believe that I would find THE company that I am looking for within weeks…and there is Touchnote.

Yes.. you may need to wait a little bit longer for my post about Touchnote..

Back to Holland..

I will head to DPC in June thanks to phpWomen. Initially I thought I would have access to all 3 days of DPC. Unfortunately a few days ago I learned it is only for the first 2 days. But that is totally oke, this means I can sleep an extra day to recover or spend this day with someone else

Oke, all for now.. now time for somesing else..

“2 free cards on www.touchnote.com coz it’s summer! Valid until Sunday. Promo code: 2-CARD-WEEKEND Please retweet!”

Yes, this means you can send 2 free real postcards to your friends, family, lover(s) … secret lover perhaps even?

You got to be quick.. this promo code lasts till Sunday.

I will send one to a friend who recently visited me in London.. still thinking to who I will send the other free postcard…

Anyway.. lets look back. This is valuable info for you if you are considering to do an internship with them..

Looking back: Hype the business with real fake reviews and posts

What can I say? They have somewhat weird projects really. One of it is having a million reviews on traveltips.addhotel.com within a few months.

Now we are talking! That sounds like a great project and very ambitious.

If only this project was to get to the million reviews by honest means.

Instead, every intern had to create accounts, post an avatar and write reviews using SEO techniques every day till the objective of 1.000.000 reviews by the interns is reached!Currently the site has 1000’s reviews, all written by interns randomly. It is just a matter of time to reach the target with 50+ interns writing appr 5 reviews a day. Aankom.com also has a lot of fake advertisements written by interns.

Is this truly the only way to get your website rolling?

If I had a hotel, I would not want to be associated with a company that uses such practises. As an intern I was very angry to have to write fake reviews. I don’t know how others feel about it, but this is not part of my Code of Conduct.

Heck… I don’t even want to be associated with them as intern (also a reason why I left).

Looking back: Hype the business with business personal blogs

I never heard any one speak about blogs before and since I arrived at the office. One day I was searching for reviews of old interns. I typed in Google: “internship studios92? and voila: my site is #1 in the results list. I was positively surprised and could not believe it. I did not apply ANY SEO technique. There were no keywords, descriptions, images etc.

A few days later every intern had to create ‘personal’ blogs (disguised company blogs) on the internet. Every post written had to meet certain requirements and implicitly all had to be positive. They even dictated when you had to write a post about a movie or something else. If you search and are a clever detective, you’ll find out which blogs were written for the company.

For me, the forced blogging was worse than the fake reviews. I don’t want to soil my blog with posts that I have to write because they order me. And I don’t want to create a blog account elsewhere just because they order me.

If it is a company blog, then it should be limited to the profession of the writer. Not being dictated by the company to write ‘personal’ posts that meet THEIR criteria. Yet an other thing that is totally against my principles and Code of Conduct.

If an intern wants to write about it, let them, but don’t force them. This is so wrong on many levels but apparently this is a correct way of doing..business..?!? to lure more innocent interns?!

Looking back: What I enjoyed

There are 6 positive tiny sparkle of goodness.

The 1st was that I had to manage/supervise. This amazing project of getting 6 Boonex Dolphin scripts installed online was such a challenge! (<= sarcasm) Not because of the programming because this is the first time they have a PHP project and they want this to be done in 1 month with a team of the nicest Java guys. All who had not touched or installed scripts online before. It also exciting to think of different strategies to accomplish this as soon as possible and still having the time to debug/optimize. But that sparkle didn’t last long for me. Though the sites were dynamic, there wasn’t a lot of coding involved. And the boss expected me to be very tough to the guys.. that is not my management style!

The 2nd thing are the people there. It is surprising to see so many different type of people getting along very well. I guess the whole situation there makes the bond between everyone stronger. I made friends there and I value each and everyone as individual.

The 3rd was the Dolphin Boonex Community script. It is an fascinating to learn their structure => finally some PHP code, it was heaven for my eyes! I am not sure if they paid for the license or just removed it.

The 4th is the activities organized by the event ‘managers’. Organizing pubnights, clubnights, pancake parties etc.

The 5th is working with Ubuntu!

The final thing I enjoyed most was coding ASP with Jeroen in the beginning!! Even though it was not high level programming..at least I was writing code and modifying the original code to improve things and make the site more internactive (pun intended) ! Jeroen is a very cool guy and I have nothing but positive things to say about him. He is so ready to reach a higher level of programming!

Why I left internship-UK

What I want is to stretch myself, to learn and grow. I did learn and grow a bit but not as a professional web developer. I learned a bit about myself (I am quite ambitious the last few months), and the decision I took to leave and search for something else made me grow (dare taking risks).

Am I too stubborn? Too ambitious? Too stupid in thinking this is not a professional environment?

There are quite a few more reasons why I left. But this post is already ridiculously long.

In the end this wasn’t the company I was looking for. I aim high, but they only hit low. They promised too much but did not deliver anywhere near close.

I feel too ambitious to be in such a strict environment. I need space to be creative and be able to voice my opinion and expertise and most importantly; work WITH the company, not working FOR the company.

Do I feel any regrets after leaving?

I have no regrets whatsoever. I would have if I actually paid the huge pile of money! But Honestly: Leaving internship-uk was and still is a relief! I know I can do better, but I have to find the correct environment to work in. Like different fish needs different types of water, internship-UK was definitely not the water I could swim in.

Unfortunately I had no web developer expertise above me to guide or motivate me to take myself to a higher level. Instead I had to take and stick with non professional web development: static websites, legacy ASP, PHP project without actually PHP’ing.

Information from ex-interns

During my internship I talked with a lot of interns. I can guarantee that more than half of the interns* feel the same about the low level of professionalism within the company, both work and the management, and the misleading information on the website. Some have no choice but to stay. I learned that most won’t express their opinion anywhere because they don’t care or have no clue they can. I do care therefore I chose to express it, just like a few others did:

1. Internship at Studios92 in England? - German discussion about experiences with studios92, very good one! (translated version: EN)
2. http://anti-internship-uk.blogspot.com - This post contains links to people having similar experiences which are (as far as I know) not written from out the company. (I am not very fond of the word ‘anti’ but oke)
3. Discussion Internship-UK.com on webmasterserve - Great to read “insults to my person treating”. Slightly aggressive post but all true.
4. Yet an other discussion about Internship-UK
5. “I quitted the company because the Boss was such a Jerk” - Entertaining little post. I love the quote he found. Also check the comment from Priscilla.

Important Tips if you are interested in internship-uk

These tips come from my own experience. It serves as a sincere warning to everyone, who is looking for information, as well. Whether you take it or not, it is totally up to you. It all depends on your perspective of working and what you want to achieve.

• If you are in search for a company/department that values your opinion on moving forward personally and with the company, instead of getting dictated what you have to do .. search elsewhere.
• If you want to work WITH the company instead of FOR the company .. search elsewhere.
• Don’t solely rely on the blogs about studios92, internship-uk and/or gift-tours only. Most of the blogs you find on the internet are written by the interns of internship-uk.
• Want freedom, creativity and ability to grow? .. search elsewhere.
  Internship-UK works with a strict company hierarchy. The things the boss or ‘manager’ say are right and you are wrong (even if you have prove that you are right). This type of hierarchy is considered almost extinct in the current and future way of working, in modern companies at least… unless you like to work in such environment.
• Does your university expect quality guidance/supervisor during your internship? .. search elsewhere.
  Don’t expect guidance as your university expect you to get. The current expert/intern ratio within the company is very low. The current ratio real employees/interns is around 3:50. This means there are about 50 interns and only 3 people who are real employees.
• Do you expect to learn from experts? .. search elsewhere.
  The experts? The boss claims to have 11 years experience but I am not sure of what. Perhaps of running a company in the old fashioned way? The manager, I have no idea what his expertise is then to boss everyone around. The IT expert is the network administrator, very cool guy though. I have nothing bad to say about him.
• Do you still want become an intern there after reading the whole post? ..apply! Then this is totally your company.

I got a bit carried away in some parts of the post while writing. Excuse me for that. But out of all companies I worked for, this is the only one that deserves a mention in my blog with the intention to warn people.

I tried to be as polite as I can be. I could not help to feel furious about their way of working. I felt cheated by image they send out, the reality I found there, what they wanted to preach me……Perhaps I just had too high expectations, and too confident…. and/or they are doing fabulous marketing.. yes, conclusion: Marketing is to trick people :p

Conclusion: Sorry to say but studios92 / internship-uk is #1 in my list of “worst work experience”!

Time to move on .. yay

The day I left to London and started my job hunt to continue my internship. Found a very promising company within just 2 weeks! An ambitious startup company with a lot of potential and concept that I believe in. A company with cornerstones. One of them is the lead developer who knows about programming and using the right tools to get the things done. I am honoured to work with them. I will start April 13th. Oh I so love the 13th!

It is time to move on and fly into the arms of my true passion! An update soon…

More readings:

Boss threatens to fire interns because of my post

I had to take down this post for a while because the boss read about it and threatened to fire a few interns I had contact with. Now they have finished their internship I put this post back online and split into different posts:

- Review: My experience with internship at Studios92 (Internship-UK)
- Review: Looking back to Studios92 and internship-UK.com
- Review: Studios92 & Internship-UK Webdevelopment internship | thumbs down

If studios92 was hell and/or disappointing for you too…

If you are one of the interns or ex-interns, please comment below or send me a message with your feedback, experience or your story. Your message will be displayed in this post and your name/email whatever will never be revealed!

Comments that seem to come from studios92 because they are obligated to write positive are not being considered.

I was quite motivated to start because of what they wrote on their website. The amazing things I would learn. Although they were quite vague on the phone and in the email about what I would be doing there exactly.

The idea I got was optimizing gift-tours or studios92. Or working for studio-solution.com. The impression I had of the latter was that outside companies were actual customers. Soon I learned that all the 100+ sites they have with studio-solution.com are their own. No actual customer with specific desires that lead to meetings, designs and programming.

Static websites?

I wondered why their websites are all HTML (with only a few exceptions). It may seem a very quick solution on the short term, but it is an extremely expensive and clumsy on the long run. When walking through the office all I see are screens with Quanta Plus (Linux editor). All marketing interns are modifying the content in the files itself (in between the HTML and bits of JavaScript code)..!!

Let me quote internship-uk.com:

“By creating modern websites and efficient software modules, you will acquire practical skills in different programming languages. During your internship you will be able to develop all your IT skills relating to web development…”

If I really was creating modern websites and software, the marketing team wouldn’t have to edit content offline, upload it and then re-create sitemaps every time they make changes to a page.

Their few dynamic sites

Their portfolio consists of few dynamic websites only. Very dynamic sites of procedural coding only. A few ASP site generate HTML pages. It is not something new to me but at least something a bit more interesting when dealing with heavy traffic. Unfortunately they never mentioned this technique by the right name, FAIL! Instead all I heard them ramble about static pages being faster. Which is true but so are dynamic pages?!? The very valid reason I heard is when de db connection is gone.

My first ASP project was changing and adding new functionality to aankom.com, a free classified ads site. Some procedural coding here and there, nothing fancy for a passionate web developer.

I find ASP not being the most optimal language to create websites. I missed a site like PHP.net with all documentation. I am not sure if there is such a site for ASP. No one told there is such a resource available and www.asp.net was slow to load (because the studios92 internet connection is f*cking slow all the time).

Use PHP: NO! … Use mod_rewrite: NO!

When I suggested to use PHP to create dynamic sites, where you can easily apply SEO techniques as well, their reply was something like: The reason why we use static websites is that when there is no database connection the site is still online (true), it is hard to apply SEO techniques with dynamic sites (false), and the best one: Google doesn’t index dynamic site! (laughing my ass off!!) For this my friend, there is a solution, which I suggested as well: mod_rewrite. But they rejected both dynamic websites and mod_rewrite HARD!

As you can see I was already confronted with a few things in the first weeks. New things are great but it felt like being brainwashed about the way of doing web development things. I felt I could teach them a few things related to web development as well, they won’t listen and always had excuses (which weren’t always valid). You can understand that I was quite angry as I have to take the things as it is: what they say is true… I am just a clueless intern.

…and a week later, PHP-related project: launch 6 dynamic sites using Dolphin Boonex Community Script and use of mod_rewrite! Install the script, modify little bits and you are done..now, that is the art of true web development!

(no wonder the boss says it is hard fro IT web developers to find a real job in the real world)

Honestly, if web development in real life is how it is with studios92, then it is a huge turn off for me! I will pack my backs and never do any coding every again… (just kidding.. they are clueless, I feel sorry for them).

Don’t create! Copy and Paste!

The boss wanted copied/pasted code. I have no trouble doing so, that is perfectly oke and legal if done the right way. It is easy for me to do so to make it work with a current site. But I wasn’t here to learn to copy/paste code only. Therefore I avoided copy and pasting code as much as possible.

Looking back: SEO tactics

The very first thing I learned were their SEO skills. I won’t get into much detail of it. Some of their SEO techniques are correct. And there were some techniques that are totally wrong in so many ways, amazing really. I explained why but was not able to convince, even not with proof.

SEO is difficult to apply

I was told that it is difficult to apply SEO when creating a website. I was surprised and puzzled. In my experience, a part of web development is about creating websites best as possible and take into account how customers or marketing can apply SEO techniques without much effort. Once you know the techniques it is easy to implement.

Probably the reason WHY it is difficult for them to apply SEO is because of their HUGE amount of static websites where everyone is editing text using a text editor. They have 100+ websites of their own. Can you imagine all these websites are updated using text editors. People are writing text in between the HTML.

Looking back: the promise by their website and the reality

I wanted to become an IT web developer with studios92 because of their info provided on the site. Looking back and analysing the promise of their website and the real life, I came to the following conclusion:

“By creating modern websites and efficient software modules, you will acquire practical skills in different programming languages. During your internship you will be able to develop all your IT skills relating to web development…”

The above sound very professional! Internship-uk and studios92 do not have modern websites. They don’t create software modules. They want us to copy and paste code everywhere because that is safe and less time consuming. Come on guys, I am not here to copy and paste code. I prefer to actually create software modules and learn how to make them ready and safe for production. Instead of blindly copy and paste!

“Developing web platforms for on-line communication systems will turn you into a flexible specialist in software engineering, web development and web marketing. As a logical thinker who can recognize structures fast and implement the most common algorithms efficiently, you will be suitable and ready to make the difference on the job market.”

Developing web platforms for online communicating systems and software engineering, sounds very professional as well! That means I don’t have to regret that I did not read Informatics Engineering at the university, I can learn it here! … ok, are they even aware that they mentioned this on the site?

Honestly, what kind of structures and algorithms do you need when you are writing little parts of procedural ASP code and copy paste much for small sites?

The only difference I could make in the job market after this is how to code using ASP, how to copy and paste and what a drag it is to use unprofessional tools. Guys, come on. I know how to write procedural code with ASP and PHP. I want the professional stuff! What you promise on your site!

“Benefits of an internship in Web Development

* Gain profound knowledge of program languages,
* improve your IT skills in web development,
* improve your management skills,
…
* cope with the most strict deadlines..”

I am not sure if I can improve my management skills in an environment where the manager is always right. That is no realistic situation. A real manager (and boss btw) learns how to deal with people and feels how to best approach every individual. Motivate them and get the best out of them. Not creating a situation where the boss or manager is always right.. creating an environment in which the interns are ass-kissing and always Yes nodders (while they actually mean No)..

But it was a nice power trip though .. telling others what to do without any resistance :p

Profound….profound? Where is the expert? … there is none, so no comment!

Strict deadlines, that is for sure.

“Furthermore we require knowledge and experience in following aspects:

* Basic knowledge in web development,
* knowledge of e-commerce and web design,
* profound knowledge of scripting languages such as PHP, ASP and JavaScript,
* be familiar with database design and SQL.”

They have no idea of programming using PHP, ASP and JavaScript and what is current in the web development world. There is no expert there who knows how to program with these languages and no one who is and keeps up to date with the latest technologies.

Companies usually have these experts and students will learn from them..at least that is what I expect from my intern company.

The internship-uk website for IT development has good content, if only it was the truth.

Looking back: Spending time on school internship reports

There was no time during the working hours for me to write different reports for school about my experiences as leading the IT team and my experiences as ASP coder. Working 7 days a week and sometimes more than 8 hours a day make it difficult to find time to do it.

I for example have to write what I did for certain competences to prove my skills. But there was simply no time for it because all I did was work work work! The moment I found time to write, I actually had no activities to write about that is within the level of my University.

Some interns lie about their activities here. If their University finds out, they have to return. They don’t want to return because they don’t get any money back!

I told my University how this company works and about my activities. I prefer to go back than staying. They agreed that I had to leave internship-uk to find a good company in London: Thank GOD… (no I don’t believe in God). After I received the approval of my University, I told the boss and left the building the very next day!

More readings:

Boss threatens to fire interns because of my post

I had to take down this post for a while because the boss read about it and threatened to fire a few interns I had contact with. Now they have finished their internship I put this post back online and split into different posts:

- Review: My experience with internship at Studios92 (Internship-UK)
- Review: Looking back to Studios92 and internship-UK.com
- Review: Studios92 & Internship-UK Webdevelopment internship | thumbs down

If studios92 was hell and/or disappointing for you too…

If you are one of the interns or ex-interns, please comment below or send me a message with your feedback, experience or your story. Your message will be displayed in this post and your name/email whatever will never be revealed!

Comments that seem to come from studios92 because they are obligated to write positive are not being considered.

Now..finally it is time for some fun stuff in the real world!

The world outside studios92’s littlestone hotel is so different! I feel free and I have air to breath.. So, what have I been up to so far?… well…

My life here so far is so unlike my life in Holland. I live in a quiet part in London but I live so close to the busy city!

Extended travelling time to work…

In Leeuwarden, where it took me max 15 minutes cycling to get from home to either work or school. It only takes 8 minutes cycling to the city. In London a trip to the city takes me at least 40 minutes. A trip to my future work in Camden takes me at least 1 hour. That is a drastic change. But if I wish to live in London, sacrifices have to be made. Sacrifices which I enjoy to make.

Get close to the women or man of your dreams…

I thought the trains in Holland could get crowded from time to time but that is nothing compared to the rush-hours in the London Tubes. Wowohwow!

If you never been close to a women (or a guy) before then this is your chance to get very close to one! Get into the tubes at rush-hour. It starts around 18:00 and can last a few hours.

Tube rush-hours are fascinating in a way. Everyone stays so positive, no complaining or whatsoever. Hm, I wonder if anyone found their current partner during a tube rush-hour.

If you are claustrophobic, DON’T GET IN during rush-hours!

What have I seen / done so far?

I did some other things besides visiting the obvious like Museums, Picadilly circus, Trafalgar square, Oxford street, Millennium bridge, Harrods too. I slept a lot (is one of my best hobbies) and… I bought a desk to do my coding. I feel so at home now with my talented and dear friend retrofantasy

Searching for a paid internship as web developer

It took me 2 weeks to find several matching companies. Those were 2 relaxing but very exciting weeks. I could finally take it more slow and catch up with all the things I had to miss the last 4 weeks. It was exciting because I had set myself a deadline. I would return to Holland if I couldn’t find a company before April 8th.

I found a few paying companies for an interview. The first job interview was directly a hit: Touchnote.com! I found Touchnote through GiveMeAStudent.com: A company dedicated to bring together highly motivated students with companies. I was slightly nervous during the interview with the CEO and Elwood (Lead web developer). My conversation with Elwood was very enjoyable. Finally someone talking web dev lang to me!  I was very pleased by the type of questions he asked me as I believe they reflect the web dev activities I want to be involved with.

After the GO I cancelled other planned job interviews and that is it. Search is over.. I CAN STAY IN LONDON!!

An update about Touchnote soon.

Movies - Cinema’s .. YaYaY

According to my well respected ex-colleague: “You have to go to the cinema in London. They are HUGEEE!”

Which one..which one? I have not yet seen the bigger halls. Perhaps a visit to the cinema’s in Leicester Square one day.

Movies seen so far:

1. Slumdog millionaire - 8/10
2. Bolt (3D) - 6/10
3. New in Town - 5/10
4. Surveillance - 3/10
5. Watchmen - 8/10
6. The boat that rocked - 8/10

My first time to a ballet show: Swan lake

…was to Swan Lake!  with a very elegant and talented lady I met during my internship with studios92.. (pssst, it was her first time as well)

I like classical music. Ballet (and movies) seems to get along with it quite well.

The play was quite enjoyable with costumes of the middle ages. Looking at the stage made me think of a middle age live painting mixed with one of Claude Monet’s paintings of Water Lilies. The focus was on the main characters. The minor characters were moving around, but not too much. Just enough to not distract and plenty to make the painting feel more alive. The colours used were very bright and flourishing, very pleasing for the eye.

And the music was great too. Unfortunately I could not see them play (sat too high) but a live orchestra is much more enjoyable than listening to a CD version. As Marina said: “It  lifts up your soul” .. it sure does.

Next thing I’d like to see is an Opera play, Phantom of the Opera perhaps?

Chessington - Zoo and amusement park

Aah..we finally met again! The Dutchies from studios92 and me. It felt good to see them again.

All of them are one by one good people! ..and Nicole (on the very left), she is amazing! I envy her! She speaks and writes CHINESE! I feel embarrassed being around her :p

Check check for more photo’s of this day.

Well, family and friends (and enemies).

You are up to date now.. thanks for reading..

Wish you a very lovely, fruitful and enjoyable day!

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Please do not forget to visit Touchnote.

So, I left internship-uk! I think I owe any potential future internship-UK/studios92 intern student something. Something that you don’t get from their websites or other of the many resources on the internet. Not only do I feel I owe them something, also to every person who might be dealing with one of their services one day.

Who should read this article about studios92 and internship-uk?

• Read it if you are interested in becoming an intern with studios92, internship-uk, gift-tours,
  • because you are about to spend a lot of money. I just want to make sure you get what you expect!
  • if you are ambitious and want to get a glimpse of a professional environment (in this case, they are not what you are looking for, their information is very deceiving)
  • especially if you want to be an IT Web development intern (because that was what I am)
  • If you joined internship-international.com. Their userbase is mainly all accounts created by the interns. Every article talking about their internship experience is written by their own interns because they were had to
• If you are a teacher of an University of applied science or University and need to know about the quality on this internship to see if this is what you want your students to be in.
• If you want to know about the quality of their hotel reviews related to website of studios92, for example worldwidetraveltips.com with their own fake users and own written reviews

This article is about my experience within internship-uk and studios92. I will highlight both the positive and negative ones. You don’t have to either agree or disagree with me. It is written from my perspective, from my Code of Conduct. I never mentioned it before in my blog because wanted to give the company the benefit of the doubt.

Warning: It is a long post and only a part of what I want to say is covered.

Boss threatens to fire interns because of my post

I had to take down this post for a while because the boss read about it and threatened to fire a few interns I had contact with. Now they have finished their internship I put this post back online and split into different posts:

- Review: My experience with internship at Studios92 (Internship-UK)
- Review: Looking back to Studios92 and internship-UK.com
- Review: Studios92 & Internship-UK Webdevelopment internship | thumbs down

It’s already a few weeks ago that I left the office of internship-uk in New Romney. My leaving of internship-uk was quite unexpected to some. The IT-team was only aware of it the day before I left. I was quite surprised about their reaction. Did not think people would actually miss me.

Signing the contract with internship-UK

Completing their application form took me around 3 hours. A few phone calls of non relevant interviews and a couple of days later I was accepted as an unpaid intern for 6 months. Don’t get fooled if they tell you that all internship in UK or London are unpaid. It is not true at all.

I expected to receive a detailed contract about the internship itself. All I received was the contract for the accommodation that I had to pay. Accommodation consists of sharing a room with at least one other person for £18 per day (£18*180 days = £3240). No Terms of service, agreement policy or any of that kind that regarding to the internship itself (!). I asked through the email about it but this question was never answered.

Things feel suspicious

As I stated in my first post about internship-uk, it felt too good to be true. Still, my common sense (Yes, I do have one) told me that something is not correct. It felt too good and at the same time there is something totally wrong with this picture. Consider the fact that I didn’t want to pay them my hard earned and partially borrowed money. I tried to get a sponsored contract. Meaning that I don’t have to pay any accommodation/food fee but I do have to stay for a year. Which is not bad at all as being abroad for 1 year is one of the things I wanted.

Payment and No refund policy

If the internship turns out very well, I have a very fruitful year. If it turns out bad, I can always find other ways to work on my career. Just needed to make sure I wasn’t stuck in a situation without reasonable escaping clause. As they have a No Refund Policy. I did pay them a little bit of money (£500) as deposit. Which I see as fee for the accommodation which is a good price for me, though it would be nice to not share the room with others.

Things I can not keep secret for you

During my internship I dealt with quite a few things that are a bit unusual. Things that, I believe, go against the grain of every well respected person and web developer that goes for the Gold without using doping.

Please do correct me if I am wrong, but for now I can not just leave it unspoken. There are things about this company, of which I feel people should be able to find out about on the internet before deciding anything. Please read on. It might not sound as bad for you while reading. But it was awful for me…

During my internship

I worked a lot because there is not much to do in New Romney. Staying in your room on free days isn’t quite exciting. I took a few days off to visit the PHP UK Conference. Being there confirmed my feeling that internship-uk is not the right company for me on so many levels.

Too many warnings and get fired

An other thing that amazed me was their warning system. Warnings are given if for example you are browsing the internet if it is not work related, smoke during small breaks, speak language other than English etc. 3 official warnings = fired. Hold on, this was never mentioned before. You can actually get fired during your internship! I never heard of this before…

Of course, not only warnings can get you fired.

If studios92 was hell and/or disappointing for you too…

If you are one of the interns or ex-interns, please comment below or send me a message with your feedback, experience or your story. Your message will be displayed in this post and your name/email whatever will never be revealed!

Comments that seem to come from studios92 because they are obligated to write positive are not being considered.

More readings:
- Review: My experience with internship at Studios92 (Internship-UK)
- Review: Looking back to Studios92 and internship-UK.com
- Review: Studios92 & Internship-UK Webdevelopment internship | thumbs down

After my 5th day here it already felt as if I am here for months! Now, is that a good or a bad thing? Oh yes, why do I list 3 company names? Pick whichever you like it is all the same company. They all offer the same internship programmes.

Ok, so I am ready to do some OOP with PHP and ASP..and unit testing and applying SEO and working in teams ..have meetings..learn from others, share my experiences and put that into practise…and lots ..lots..lots of coffee.

But..the internship programme they have is not worth money paying for!
They’ll use you and you can not go anywhere if you paid them. They don’t refund!

The work - activities

Let me start by saying: I LOVE UBUNTU and I hate mouses without ‘back’ and ‘forward’ buttons.

So how are my first weeks? I am lucky to have Jeroen by my side every day. Thanks to him I started do something that is called coding with ASP since my very first working day. My love for PHP has grown stronger ever since I wrote my very first ASP statement for one of their websites: aankom.com

So far I only worked with Jeroen on a website and only used ASP. Too busy to get the functionality working and no time to apply SEO the way they would like it to be.

At the moment of writing they have static websites mostly (apart from a few sites that have bits of ASP code). I wonder why static and I suggested that dynamic websites can improve their company. I felt they were not happy with this suggestion because static websites get indexed by Google and dynamic ones not and if the database connection (this one is sensible though) is broken, then you can not use the dynamic website. Also the URL is not user friendly with dynamic websites. (do they live under a rock??)

SEO workshop

Boring SEO workshop lasting 3 hours. No interaction and it is hard to hear what is been said. Not everything they say about SEO is true btw.

Also I suggested url rewrite to solve the URL unfriendly-ness but no luck on that one. According to them URL rewrite returns 301 or 302 and Google will ban or penalize website for using that. Showing an article written by Google where Google even suggests to use mod_rewrite did not help either. I am so lost..or I am the worst web developer ever.. :p

We all got SEO workshops. About how to optimize sites for search engines. I was pretty sure that I knew a lot about SEO and websites. Funny thing is, that most of the things they taught me are things that I never knew before (sarcasm) and never heard of before…let me give you an example with Meta keywords: Yahoo does index them and Google doesn’t at all, Google ignores them. The meta keywords are there for Yahoo only … An other example: Sponging* is not SEO friendly  -_- ..shame on everyone who is embedding vids and linking to Flickr images directly ..shame shame :-s (come one, Google will punish us for that?!)

Everything they teach me is true because they are right (that is their policy) .. so I will have to take it as it is. Even if they are wrong, they are right!

Quanta Plus

Not working with Dreamweaver or Zend Studio is hard for me. Once you are used to good software and the speed to develop websites it is hard to get used to other software (I am not saying that I am fast, I just happen to develop a less slow with these software compared to Quanta).

I do enjoy working with Quanta, mainly because it is on Ubuntu and I soooo love it.

Anyway, so far my work experience for the first weeks. I really need to take a few days off.

The people here

There is not much to say about all the other studios92 interns here, besides: They are wonderful..LOVELY! There are cute girls and very nice guys. They come from everywhere! Dutch and Italians are overruling here. Dutch and Italian invasion ftw! .. Also a few from USA, Spain, France, Belgium, Germany, Lithuania etc etc.. all with studios92 of internship-uk. The question now is, are they happy? I mean the interns are great. Most of them have no work experience and learn faulty things here. Those who have experience hate this place to work but won’t say a thing to avoid official warnings. The boss and so called business manager are lousy and truly don’t have the good management style, no charisma or leadership at all.

I had a very inspirational thought for my business weeks before I started my internship with studios92. Right now I am still very confident about it and this internship encourages me to want it even more. I can not wait to look back to my successful career in web development as an intern. To return to Holland and start my own company… and to visit London very often

Cu later..

More readings:
- Review: My experience with internship at Studios92 (Internship-UK)
- Review: Looking back to Studios92 and internship-UK.com
- Review: Studios92 & Internship-UK Webdevelopment internship | thumbs down