The Linkbait Generator is here to help you come up with a topic that will sure to grab eyeballs. 

For those of you outside of the blogging circle, let me explain what linkbait is. Linkbait is something posted or written about that people will notice and link back to.  By linking to your site, other sites are saying they value the content of your site and that they think other people will be interested in it, too.

Now the Linkbait Generator might be a little tongue in cheek, but I am going to use it for a while – and see if the headlines really inspire me to come up with the greatest blog post ideas ever created.  Go bookmark it for your own use at: linkbaitgenerator.com.

I do much of my e-mail management from within Gmail.  One of the few annoyances I have found is having somebody tell me they just sent me something, and I have to click through several links to check manually that specific POP account.  By default Gmail uses a common timing algorithm to fetch your POP account mail, but now you can ask them to do it at the click of a button.

Thanks to a new Gmail Labs feature, you can now use the Refresh link to check all your POP mail accounts too.  Just click on the Google Labs green beaker at the top of Gmail, and enable Refresh POP accounts.

Now, if you use Gmail to manage both your Gmail account and your POP mail accounts, you can check all your mail accounts quicker. (via Lifehacker)

Fav4.org provides users with a really simple way to start their browsing on the Web.  The idea here is to setup a simple web site as your browser’s default start page.  You can add up to four of your favorite sites to be highlighted by icons.  I really like the idea here because I like keeping things clean, organized and simple. 

So, can you customize it to suit your own needs? 

Yes, you can!  To customize the settings, just click on the “Site Settings” text at the bottom of the screen.

From there, you have four sections that you can change and edit to suit your own needs.  Each section is pretty self explanatory, so let I will just cover the basics for each one.

• Info – This page gives you the basic instructions on how to get started.
• My Fav4 – From this page, you can select four links to highlight (in icon form) on the front page of your own Fav4 page.  As of right now there are over 75 different sites to choose from.
• Options – The options page allows you to set the links to open in a new window, place a search box on the page, or change the theme from lights on (with a light gray background) or lights off (with a black background).
• Suggest – Have a suggestion of something you would like to see?  Send it to them via this page.
• About – On this last section, you can learn more about the Fav4.org project, and how to follow them on Twitter and Facebook.

So there you have it.  Fav4.org might soon be one of the new favorite destinations on the Web, because it helps you simplify your favorites in a very unique way.  Go check it out at Fav4.org.

Now that Google Buzz is out in the wild, your Google profile page deserves a little more attention.  So, what all have you done to spruce up your own profile page?  I’ll share with you some of the things I did to make this a much more informative page about me for Googlers to find.

First things first, you need to setup your Google profile page.  If you are logged into Google in any way (for example, with a Gmail account) this is fairly easy to do.  All you need to do is set it up at Google.com/profiles.

Once you fill out all the basic information, then you might want to start thinking about what pages you want to show up in the links section. 

To add custom links, just go to your Google profile page, click on Edit Profile, then scroll down to the Links section.  You should see several links Google knows about, that you have given it before – then you can also add your own.  I have added links to all my various web pages, and then my Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and MySpace profiles.

Next, you should setup Google Buzz via your Gmail account.  Once you do, anything you post via Google buzz – you will automatically share on your Google profile page.

Feel free to visit my Google profile page if you need some inspiration.

Now there are a lot more various boxes and basic you can fill out via the Google profile page, but they are all pretty self explanatory.  With the tips I gave you here, you can use your Google profile page as a social landing page for your own work and also a better way to let people know who you are and what you do.

Do you find the sound of rain to be relaxing?  Being from Texas, thunderstorms in the Spring are like second nature, so I really do like the sound of rain.  You can now though add that gentle sound of rain to your environment with Rainy Mood.

This web site is simple, and to the point. You have a big ol’ play button in the middle of the web page, and when you click it – the rain sounds stop or start.  The web site plays a 15 minute high quality loop of rainy sounds.

So if you feel like you get your best work done with the rainy noises in the background, be sure to check out RainyMood.com.

WooRank is an impressive new web site analysis tool worth singing the praises of.  I have several of these types of online tools bookmarked, and I have written about most of them.  The thing that separates WooRank’s analysis of a domain over any other tool is the plethora of information they provide to you.

After submitting mitchelaneous.com to the site, I found out tons of information I can turn around and use to make my web site even better.  Here are some of the details this online tool provides to you:

• Visitors
• Content
• In-Site SEO
• Home analysis
• Inside analysis
• Website compliance
• Off-Site SEO
• Popularity
• Directories
• Social Media
• Usability
• Website information
• Server
• Domain
• Related websites

WooRank is definitely my new favorite tool to find out how I can make my web sites better.  I got a WooRank of 53.1.  Can you beat me?  Plug your own domain name into WooRank.com and see what score you get.

Are you looking for a way to spark your creative fuse?

“Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia.”

- E.L. Doctorow

I love to write, and have done so semi-professionally for the past seven years or so.  Sometimes though, a good topic to write about it hard to find, or you might be out of creative muses to inspire you.  That is where the web site Write for Ten comes into play.

This web site serves as a writing sketchbook. Writers from all skill levels and of all types can come any enjoy this resource.  It is handy for a number of reasons.  It can help inspire you with an idea.  It can keep you in writing shape, if you have a hard time finding the time in the day to do so. 

Via the Write for Ten web site, here are several ways you can participate:

• Take ten minutes now and write! Grab a notebook, open a text editor, sign up for an account, or post a blog.
• Write a ten-minute post using the Write for Ten site. Your posts are published at http://writeforten.com/users/username.
• Grab a timer and write a blog post for ten minutes. Add our badges to the bottom of your posts.
• Make a habit of writing everyday. Use this site or your favorite blogging platform (e.g., Wordpress, Blogger, Tumblr, Posterous )
• Tweet your posts with the hash tag #writeforten or #wf10.

This free writing exercise is an excellent way to get over writer’s block. 

Want to join in on the fun?  Point your browser towards writeforten.com.

Television commercials just haven’t been the same since Billy Mays passed away, right?  I think so.  If you feel like your missing Billy Mays enough to seek out his best lines from the Internet, I have a resource you should not do without. 

InstantBillyMays.com is yet another favorite sound effect web site of mine.  Push the button, and you can hear the infomercial king at his best.  If nothing else, it does server as a good way to make people in the office think you’ve officially lost it.

But wait, there’s more!  If you act now, I’ll toss in six and a half other sound effect sites, absolutely free!

The last time I used the web site commenting service Disqus, I was really less than impressed.  Back in July 2009, I tried it and for lack of a better term, it was sloppy.  While the core of the system worked, it seems as if nobody there paid attention to detail.  However, everybody deserves a second shot.

Fast forward to about a week ago, when I decided to re-install Disqus again on Mitchelaneous.com, FirefoxFacts.com and WebHostingShow.com.  As a reminder, here are the flaws the system had before:

Now I’ll cut to the chase, and tell you why.  It seems that no matter how I tweaked around with WordPress, I could never get DISQUS to pick up on all my trackbacks and comments.  One or two a day would get stuck going to the internal WordPress comment engine (which is practically blocked from you after you install DISQUS).

Now, while this is still true, Disqus does a better job now at picking up all the comments, so none get missed.  If you have trouble with Disqus missing comments or trackbacks, try these steps out:

1. Login to your WordPress administrator section, and go to Settings > Discussions.
2. Be sure to leave these unchecked:
   + Users must be registered and logged in to comment
   + Automatically close comments on articles older than X days
   + Enable threaded (nested) comments X levels deep
   + Break comments into pages with X top level comments per page…
   + Anyone posts a comment
   + A comment is held for moderation
   + An admin must always approve the comment
   + Comment author must have a previously approved comment
3. Under “Comment Moderation” be sure to bump up the link number to something ridiculously high, like 200.  This way WordPress won’t try to moderate the incoming comments and will leave that job to Disqus.

Also, be sure to save your settings after making those changes. Ever since I made those changes, I have had no problems with WordPress and Disqus, and hopefully neither will you.

The real benefit in using Discus is it gives your commenters a way to login to comment via multiple different services. For example, you can now login using these services to comment right here on Mitchelaneous.com:

• Disqus
• Facebook
• Twitter
• OpenID
• Yahoo

I also really like the fact that in the usual “trackback” section, you can show people’s recent tweets about your pages too.  You can skim Digg, Twitter, and a number of other social web sites. I can also stay in touch with all of you better too because Disqus gives me one place to check out all the most recent comments from across all my blogs.

So Disqus, I take back the bad things I said about you.  Just keep up the great work, and I’ll be a happy fan boy.

When you change a regular tab into an app tab, it moves it to the left side of the tab bar and shrinks the tab down to the size of the favicon shown for the web site.  I have to have four or five browsers open just to cover all my bases on a day to day bases – so getting any type of extra tab real estate in Firefox is a good thing for me. 

To open a new App tab, just right click the tab bar and select App Tab from the context menu.  When your done with an App tab, just close it – or you can set it to restore the App tab every time you start the browser. 

If you want to enjoy this Firefox 4 feature before it becomes a standard, the App Tabs add-on for Firefox is the perfect tool for the job.