I was using Martin Fitzpatrick’s excellent plugin called AdSense Manager to handle Google ads on my blog. Version 2.x worked well but version 3.x stopped working properly with sidebar widgets and the admin interface failed to commit certain page changes.

My quest to find a solution was unsuccessful so I trashed the plugin and looked for an alternative. Other WordPress plugins looked weak in comparison so I went old-school and within 15 minutes I had a working replacement using a few lines of PHP and JavaScript code from Google. While it’s not as convenient as a plugin, it works fine with sidebar widgets.

Thanks to tamba2’s excellent (and brief) how-to guide.

Since January of this year I’ve been using Facebook to stay in touch with friends, colleagues, and other folks I don’t see often. There’s something to be said about seeing people’s faces every day which reminds you to stay in touch. Poke (and SuperPoke) is the greatest way to tell someone “hi” without getting into a dialog.

Since Facebook wants to make a few dollars in their effort to provide free services, they’ve initiated clandestine tactics to gather and distribute your surfing habits to others. Facebook’s Beacon software isn’t terribly popular for this reason but there are ways to keep it quiet.

wikiHow describes the proper way to disable Beacon in Facebook’s security settings as well as the BlockSite add-on for Firefox. Although the article doesn’t mention this you can use the BlockSite add-on in Flock (which, like Firefox, is based on Mozilla.

Manas Tungare describes how to filter out Beacon in the Mac version of Safari. I haven’t installed PithHelmet to test because it appears only in beta status for Safari 3 (which ships with Leopard).

I haven’t messed around with Nokia’s Lifeblog service because I don’t have an Nseries device and blogging from a mobile seems somewhat limited. In any event, Lifeblog supports TypePad as a blogging platform but WordPress support is strangely missing.

PhoneBoy developed a solution for WordPress versions 2.05 through 2.2 and today his hack supports 2.3. So grab a copy of his PHP code and go nuts.

[Via Weblog Tools Collection]

eBay is a great place to sell stuff but I’ve discovered that being a seller isn’t as lucrative as it used to be. Auction fees and PayPal fees have increased. More and more buyers don’t complete auctions and eBay’s dispute resolution is a joke because they don’t take into account the negative feedback you’ll receive if you challenge a buyer who defaulted.

The hassles aren’t worth it and I’ve been donating my wares to the woman who cleans my home, The Salvation Army or the e-waste bin at Best Buy rather than selling it on eBay. However, a recent post at Uncluttered has changed my tune.

SecondRotation buys used electronics such as mobile phones, GPS units, laptops, MP3 players, and more. They don’t buy everything but I found a number of my old mobile phones (sadly dropped into the Best Buy e-waste bin last month) on their list: Sony T68i, Blackberry 7100t, even a Nokia 8210.

Find your device then rate its condition and what original pieces you have such as product manual, charger, battery, etc. You’re not going to get a premium but they pay for shipping and send you a check or deposit to a PayPal account.

For example, my 7100t fetched $24 (comparable to completed eBay auctions) without paying listing fees and finding someone interested in an old Blackberry. I could have gotten a dollar more for including an original manual but it wasn’t worth my time to find it.

The convenience and free shipping is worth trying SecondRotation. What they do with everything is a mystery but don’t wait forever to dump your old gadgets (like my Palm Tungsten T3) otherwise you’ll be stuck with eBay.

So we heard Google acquired the Twitter-like service called Jaiku. Jaiku offers a few ways, via your mobile device, to publish a post but it’s the native Symbian (S60) client which I think is what hooks the Nokia peeps.

Let’s pause for a moment and consider that Google picked up GrandCentral earlier this year. One of GC’s big features is Visual Voicemail for web-based clients or mobile devices that have a WAP browser.

Through its acquisition of Jaiku it’s reasonable to think Google will continue (and expand) it’s support of the Symbian platform. If so, turning GC’s Inbox into native S60 would compete head-on with the iPhone’s killer feature: visual voicemail.

However, there is also the issue of getting GC to sync with mobile devices or third-party services like Plaxo or even Google Contacts. Let’s not forget the long-awaited Gphone which should integrate seamlessly into Google’s network of web-based products.

Perhaps the Gphone will mean an end to Google’s Symbian development even before it gets started. Let’s hope not because GC Inbox would rock on my Nokia E61.