Have you ever wanted to share an article with someone but give emphasis on a certain sentence or paragraph? AwesomeHighligher is a newly launched service that lets you do just that.

Along with just entering the URL you want to highlight you also have the option of installing the awesome highlighter firefox extension. If you register for an account all of your highlighted pages are stored in your account for future reference.

I made a very short demo of the system.

After talking to the sites founders I got some insight into where the idea for the website came from.

We were working in a shipping yard and there was an accident. A box of
bricks fell, nearly crushing us…but a highlighter swooped in to save us.
From that day forward, we swore to promote the idea of highlighting and
sharing text to the world.

Pretty crazy.

It’s a really simple idea that’s been executed really well. It’s definitely a service I will be using often.

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.

Founded on December 1st 2007, DealQUE‘s focus is on social bargain hunting, where users generate dealQUE’s deal content and share it with he community.

Similar to social book marking sites DealQUE’s users not only submit deals, but depending on their popularity they control the ranking of these deals.

The main page has a nice design, with an easy to use interface. DealQUE has it’s own algorithm which is determined by various factors such as the amount of times a deal is clicked, the frequency of clicks, and “the distance from the earth to the moon relative to DealQUE headquarters”! Deals with a higher rating are displayed before others.

26 year old Emmanuel and his two friends Marie and Peter were always on a lookout for deals on the internet, and figured “why not share their great finds with a community of users who are like minded!”

It took them two and a half months from idea to launch to get DealQUE up and running. They had an alpha stage before the website was complete, which was a basic daily deal aggregator. The entire website was built by the 3 of them, so not a penny was spent on the development process. Marie has an background in art, and everyone is a software engineer. They work out of their home offices, surviving purely on Roman noodles (Oriental flavor is the best)

Since launch, they spent a minimal amount of money on servers, google ads, and facebook ads. Their revenue model is based on direct advertisements and revenue sharing through affiliations.

DealQUE is teaming up with Price Grabber, and by the end of the month hope to have Price Grabber’s features fully integrated on DealQUE.com. This will allow for a better user experience such as price comparisons and showing related products.

If you’re constantly on the lookout for new deals, make sure to check out DealQUE’s RSS feed to stay updated on the latest and greatest deals!

Next time you’re looking for something to buy, make sure to head over to DealQUE and find it for less.

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.