If you haven’t heard about muxtape yet you’re in for a treat. It’s a wonderfully simple website that lets you create “mix tapes” and share them with your friends. Launched in April they’ve already got some great traction and currently boast over 100,000 users.

The way the site is setup means it’s a great way of discovering new music you might not have otherwise listened to. Unfortunately up until now there has been no way of searching for songs within mix tapes that people have made so while it’s a great way of discovering new music it’s quite hard to find songs that you actually want to listen to.

Cue muxfind. A project by Jan Oberst that lets you search for songs on muxtape. You enter a song name and it’ll search the content of muxtape and bring back a list of mix tapes that include the song you specified. What’s great about this is that 9 times out of 10 the other songs that are in the same mix will be similar in style to the song you searched for and generally, you’ll like them.

That’s all wonderful, but the songs are still streaming from the internet. Although there is a way of downloading the songs to your computer so you can transfer them to your iPod and listen to them whenever you like. See the video tutorial below.

Thanks to a wonderful service some know of as WireNode, you’re now able to access IndieStartups on your phone faster than you can… well, I’ll leave the imagination to you. Check it out on your mobile @http://is.wirenode.mobi

Okay, a few days prior to today I was reading the wonderful hacknews and came upon this article. It covers some elements and ideas that helped us find interest in bootstrapping and independent-ness at IndieStartups. I’m quoting a bit here, or if interested the article can be read at OnStartups.

1) Most folks don’t need venture funding in the early stages

2) the odds of first-time entrepreneurs actually raising VC is pretty low.

Oh, and 3) it’s one of the least fun activities an entrepreneur can take. Raising funding is often harder than building a product/business — and much less fun!

…

The simple answer is no, I have not changed my mind on VC. I still don’t think most early-stage entrepreneurs should go out on the venture fund-raising circuit. They should maintain the option of a modest exit. Focus on solving the customer’s problem (not the VC’s problem). My situation with HubSpot was special. I had already done the bootstrap thing (multiple times) and made money. I had above average odds of raising money for HubSpot.

So, why did I raise funding? Because, this time around I wanted to take a shot at the big leagues. Sure, any success (even a modest one) is nice. But a modest success is not going to change my life much at this point. I want to swing hard. It’s not about the money. It’s about the fun and excitement of pursuing a really big idea, working with really smart people and doing what I love. [And, of course, the money won't hurt either]

And that, my friends, is why I raised $17 million in venture funding.

Once again, full article at OnStartups.

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.