Rifflet is an interesting project that lets musicians share unfinished parts of songs in the hope that other musicians can collaborate and combine musical ideas to form new ones.

Rifflet was produced for $0, in roughly two weeks, from idea to launch. It’s a great example of a solid idea executed very well for very little cash.

I heard from the sites founders, Jon and Kelly. They we’re more than helpful with helping me source this post.

It’s amazing how fast the Riffflet community is growing, and every day we hear from people about how much they love the site. We just had one member produce the first song built out of pieces on the site, so we’ve actually help something get created, which is really exciting.

I love little startups like this. They noticed a gap and they produced something quality for very little money to fill it. If more people were doing this the Internet would be a much better place.

There is already some good stuff going on over there. If you’re a musician check them out.

It’s rare that I find a site that I instantly fall in love with but Tengaged is one of those sites. The idea is simple. If you’ve ever watched or heard about “Big Brother” you’ll feel right at home.

Upon sign up you’re prompted to design your own charecter by scrolling through numerous different face, body, hair, eyes options to create a unique avatar that will be used throughout the rest of the game in a very “mii-esq” way.

After you’re registered you’re thrown into a “game” with 9 other users. A game lasts for 7 days and someone is “voted off” at the end of each day. To increase your chances of staying in the game you’re encouraged to interact with other members. Spark up conversations, post pictures, stories and generally try and keep the other members entertained, much like in the big brother house.

I spoke with Carlos Fernand, the guy behind Tengaged earlier today.

There is no point to have 2000 friends in your profile if you dont even know them, there was a need to create a different way to know people.

This is a really unique way of getting users to interact with one and other. I can see a lot of friendships being formed on this website. It’s really refreshing to see someone doing something completely new.

What’s even more impressive is that to date Carlos has only spent 1,000 Euros. Saving a lot of money by designing and developing the entire website himself.

In a nut shell flingmix is a free location-based, adult personals site built using the google maps API.

Brain child of John Blazer and built over a 2 month period working on weekends.

Other dating sites ask you all these survey questions, trying to find a perfect match for you based on a full set of criteria. I realized there’s a market for people who just want a quick fling with a very small footprint. Usually they are seeking a discreet sexual encounter.

On FlingMix.com, a user can literally search for a user and map them by distance within only a few feet. There might be another user in the hotel room next to you and you can see them on the map. You can email them immediately. No sign up, no registration, no credit cards – just a direct email. It’s similar to craigslist’s implementation of anonymous emails. You can be sending an email to an interested user in two clicks.

I spent a few minutes messing about with the system and it is pretty solid.

The site has all the features you’d expect to find on a site like this but flingmix seems to do what most other personal listing sites do in a very elegant way + the added google maps implementation.

John managed to keep startup costs considerably down by developing the site and system himself. To date he has only spent around $50.

One of the main selling points of this site is that it is free. That said, the money has to be made somewhere. Currently the site relies on revenue from adverts as it’s only source of income. The way the email server is setup means that when people send messages to [email protected] (a unique email generated for each listing, keeping your real email address a secret) John can attach an advert to the footer of an email before it is delivered. It’s nothing amazingly new but i’m sure a lot of entrepreneurs would have missed this opportunity.

It’s a pretty sweet site and i’m sure it fills a gap in the (arguably saturated) market.

Have you ever wondered what the people working around you are making but are too scared to ask? Springraise might just be for you. It’s dubbed as a “Carreer sharing network” and let’s you track your “career curve” and compare it against others in your industry with similar experience levels as you.

Springraise isn’t quite let yet (launching May 21st) but you can see a preview of the app below.

So how does it work?

1. Enter your full background and employment information (past and present)
2. View your career over time to see how you compare to others like you
3. See the careers of others like you (in one click) and compare your career to theirs
4. Perform scenarios to see your career prospects
5. Discuss with others to learn how they made their career decisions

This video should give you a bit more of an insight to the concept and idea. I’m looking forward to seeing this one in action.

Siftd is a digg clone that tries to solve some of the problems digg has been having of late. The concept is simple. Users submit stories to siftd, if other users like the stories they can digg them (or in this case “vote” them) up. When the story has enough “votes” it is featured on the homepage and receives more exposure. That is the concept but the computer algorithm that works out which stories deserve to be bumped up to the homepage is a lot more complex than that.

So what’s different about siftd?
The main difference with siftd is the algorithm. Currently the algorithm gives equal weight to stories in specific categories meaning it takes a story from each section and promotes it to the front page based on its popularity from the upcoming section. The algorithm also keeps too many stories from a single section from making it to the front page. In theory you should get a more diverse range of stories being promoted.

I asked Brian Rubash, one of the site owners how he came up with the idea.

We have been (and still are) long time users and fans of digg.com and have watched it’s transition from a tech news site to a more diverse site. By late last year it was increasingly evident that digg wasn’t going to return to what it used to be so we set about to create something that could provide a similar experience to the tech crowd, and other demographics, without compromising any group’s experience. We also looked at sites beyond Digg for features that impressed us, and features that made everything easier for the user. We have been called a Digg clone, but I think we really offer something more, and that really goes back to our goal of working for our users.

Siftd isn’t the first to follow digg’s voting model of making stories more popular (see mixx and reddit) but the system they have is solid. It’s going to be very interesting to see if they can get any traction at all and start stealing users away from digg but I personally think they may have shot themselves in the foot a little bit by branding themselves so similarly to digg. Usually (in my experience) to make any impact on a market that is already being dominated by some big players you need to offer something drastically new to get any attention at all.