2. Hide Your Buzz Contact List from Prying Eyes

This isn't all that different from FriendFeed expect for one important fact: on FriendFeed you picked and chose who your friends were, but your Buzz contacts are added for you automatically based on who you email the most. If that's not information you want to share, here's how to turn it off:

Sign into your Google account via Gmail (or any other Google service) Go to your Google profile here: http://google.com/profiles/me Click the link at the top-right of the screen that reads "Edit Profile" Here, you'll see a checkbox that reads "Display the list of people I'm following and people following me." To make this info private, just uncheck that box. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the "Save changes" button

So why use a blog? I suggested at the beginning of this post that a blog is basically a publishing platform. As I have been preparing it I have become more aware of the variety of ways in which I have used them, and I am also aware that there are many facilities offered by blog platforms, commonly used by others, that I have not even tried using yet. So let’s rephrase the question: Why use a publishing platform? Why use a platform that can enable you to write what you like, when you like, how you like, to whom you like? That you can edit and re-edit at will, as often as you like? That you can use to publish to a select group or to the whole world?  Where you can display your own or others’ text, documents, images, audioclips, videos, slideshows, charts, maps and Google Street View tours? That you can link from to anything on the big wide web? That you can organise and style in a variety of ways? That you can tag so that others can find it? That others can post comments to? That your students can use in as many or as few of these ways as you, or they, see fit? Or your Granny, likewise? Why, indeed?