Recently, I came to know about Quarkbase, an interesting site that provides detailed information about any website or blog. Just enter the name of a website and hit the search button. Within a few seconds it will collect data from different web sources and will provide you with all the information you wanted to know about that website.

In the website report, Quarkbase provides a summary of the website along with a screenshot, which is followed by an introduction, ownership information, social popularity, traffic information and other interesting information related to that website. The introduction part covers brief description, domain ownership information and contact address.

The social popularity part covers information about the performance of a particular site over different social bookmarking sites and it’s RSS feed popularity. It also tells you about the popular pages during last week and the popular pages of all time.

The traffic section of a website report provides information about Alexa rank. global reach, top countries , top subdomains and average page views per day over a period of time. So, no need to check Alexa!

Quarkbase also tells you about the people and technology behind a website. The people feature is helpful, if you want to know about a company website. Well, Quarkbase also have an interesting spotlight section, that tells about the latest mention of that particular website on the blogosphere, on Google news and even on Twitter!

So, if you want detailed information about any website within a very short period of time, then Quarkbase might be the right tool for you. I love the way it presents the data and information. I am sure that you will also love it. Quarkbase provides the report about a website by collecting data from 30 different data sources and mashing them up through different algorithms. So, there is no doubt about the quality of information provided by this simple, but useful tool. Try it today.

Want to show how many comments you have on your blog? Try Liz Strauss Comment Counter, a WordPress plugin that creates a static image to display the number of total comments on your WordPress blog. Take a look at the sample below. It really looks nice and matches with the FeedBurner chicklet.

The plugin generates a static image every time a comment is left or the admin moderates one. If for some reason your server fails to generate a static image, the plugin falls back to generating the badge on the fly. It ensures that you always have something to show on your blog!

Liz Strauss Comment Counter can display this comment counter as a widget on your sidebar. Well, if you theme is not widget-supported, you can place this counter anywhere on your blog by adding a simple code. The plugin comes with a set of some nice color presets for the badge. But, you can also customize the look by using the in-built color picker.

Plugin Page | Download Plugin

Tweetrush is a new analytics tool that provides estimated stats on Twitter usage over a period of time. It provides stats about both individual and overall Twitter usage. The stats are represented with nice diagrams and you can drill down the stats to get detailed information about Twitter usage for a given date.

How to use it? On the frontpage, it shows stats about weekly total tweets, weekly active tweeters, daily top tweeters and all time hourly average tweets. You can drill down any of these stats to get more detailed information about the usage. Want to know about the usage of a Twitter user? Just enter the username in the search field and hit the submit button. Tweetrush will display stats about weekly, daily and hourly usage of Twitter by that particular user.

Tweetrush is actually a test application of Rush Hour, a new analytics engine that is under active development. It analyze the tweet or message sending action of public messages sent via twitter by using data feeds from a third party application. Well, Tweetrush uses only the public data and is unable to track direct messages or messages from private users.

It updates the stats every six minutes and utilizes heavy DB caching in order to minimize the load on our DB servers. It also delays all stats by 15 minutes to filter and minimize data loss. So, in some cases you may have to wait 30 min for your stats to be updated. As it is dependent on a third party data feed, there may be some difference between the real usage of Twitter and the stats reported by Tweetrush. Still, we can use this cool and new tool to get some idea about the Twitter usage trends. What you say?

MeetingWave is a new and free meeting website for offline networking with new people in the places you will be, whether traveling or near home or work. They provides some nice tools to help you in developing your business and social networks through face-to-face meetings.

What you can do on MeetingWave.com? You can arrange meetings for the purposes of social networking, business networking, sharing common interests, or any other purpose. On the other hand, you can also browse invites posted by others on MeetingWave and accept proposed meetings that interest you. They also offers a search feature that you can use to find meetings taking place in your area.

After registration, you can create and post an Invite on MeetingWave. They allows two types of invites – Public Invite and Private Invite. A Public Invite is an invitation for meeting new people which will be published on MeetingWave and will be viewable and can be accepted by anyone.  Well, as the meeting organizer, you can control who will attend your meeting by approving or declining any acceptance for any reason. On the other hand, a Private Invite is for meetings you set up where you invite only specific guests and is not open for public. For this kind of invitations, you will have to provide the email addresses of your guests, so that MeetingWave can send them your invitations.

Interesting point is that, you can choose to have the meeting location disclosed only to people you approve to attend. Moreover, their in-built messaging system will allow you to communicate – directly and privately – with those people who have indicated an interest in attending your meeting.

So, MeetingWave is a nice social networking platform that you can use to expand your social network or simple meet new friends – anytime, anyplace! They have all the tools for arranging and joining an offline meeting. Try it today!

If you do a lot of link posting on your blog of social networks, then LinkBee can help you earn some extra bucks! What is LinkBee? It is basically an URL shortening or URL linking site that pays for posting and sharing links. They displays Interstitial ads between the transition of your link and Frame Banner ads at the top of the destinations page and shares the ad revenue with the link creators. They also pays for referring members, up to 5 levels!

How LinkBee works? LinkBee offers three different linking mechanisms. Two of their options, Interstitial Ads and Top Frame Banner Ads will allow you to earn revenues from your links. And the third option offers standard URL linking service with no advertisements.

It is very simple to start with LinkBee. Just sign up, create links through LinkBee and get paid for posting and sharing those links on the web. They offers an attractive 50% revenue share. Payments are send on a NET 30 day basis and for payout, you must reach a minimum balance of $25. They offers three options for payment – Paypal, Epassporte and Cheque.

So, if you love to share links and want to make some money out of it, LinkBee might be a right option for you. Well, there are also some chances of annoying your readers with intrusive ads. So, use it at your own risk while promoting affiliate links!

Pepperjam Network is relatively a new, but the fastest growing affiliate marketing network. It was launched in January 15, 2008 and have seen significant growth and popularity within a short period of time. The 2008 Inc. 500 list revealed that Pepperjam is the fastest growing affiliate marketing network. The list also places it among the top 100 fastest growing companies in the United States.

Pepperjam is in Advertising & Marketing business since 1999 and with three-year revenue growth of 2,447.5%, it got the 70th position in the 2008 Inc. 500 list. This is Pepperjam’s third consecutive year on Inc. Magazine’s list of fastest growing companies. This is really a great achievement for Pepperjam and a good news for it’s partners and affiliates.

Pepperjam Network offers a number of good campaigns for affiliate marketers in different niche. They offers $10 as a sign-on bonus to new affiliates and pays either a flat payout or a percentage of the overall sale. For bloggers, they have “Blogger Incentive Program” that pays $10 for every blog post focused on Pepperjam Network news or tools.  This is really an interesting opportunity for bloggers to earn some extra bucks. So, in my view, Pepperjam Network is a great affiliate network to start affiliate marketing.  Join Pepperjam Network today.

For more information about this fastest growing affiliate marketing network, you can read my earlier review of Pepperjam Network.

Want to think beyond text status updates? Then you must think about video, as video is interactive and interesting. But, where you are going to post your video status updates? I am sure that it is not possible with Twitter or other similar services. So, here comes 12seconds into the scene. 12seconds is a new video status platform that you can use to share where you are or what you’re doing by using short video clips.

As the name says, on 12seconds, you can wrap your thoughts within a 12 second long video clip and share it with your friends and family. The catch is here! You will get only 12 seconds to tell about your status. If you are creative, then 12 seconds is enough to tell what you did on your blog or what you took in dinner! On the other hand, short videos means there are lesser chances of boring your viewers!

You can record and share 12 second long video updates with just about any mobile phone or a web cam. Just record your video and email or MMS it to the unique email address that 12seconds gave you and your video status is up and available for the world. You can easily share your video by using the unique link or the embed code provided by 12seconds.

12seconds is a free service and right now it is in private alpha stage. So, it requires an invitation to get an account. If you are unable to get an invitation from other sources, then you can request them for one by providing your email address.