If you want to turn it off, it takes a little more effort to find. I went into my gmail settings thinking they’d have added it there, but no settings for Buzz were to be found.

At the very bottom of the gmail window in the footer is a link where you can turn off buzz.

When you go to Google’s FAQ section here is their instructions:

Turning Buzz off

If you don’t want to use Buzz, you can disable it. To completely remove all of your participation in Buzz, follow all of these steps in order:

1. Delete your Google profile. Here’s how.
2. Block all of the people following you. Here’s how.
3. Turn off Buzz at the bottom of Gmail. Here’s how.

Read more about Disabling Buzz.

To read the full article go to Google Buzz: User Control Features.

Did you know Google also allows you to create a user profile that is publicly viewable?  Be careful of what information you share!

The creators of WebsiteGrader.com founded HubSpot and have also written a book called “Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs (The New Rules of Social Media)” by Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah.  I’m reading through that now to see where we missed obvious items that can help our sites get found better.  I’ll let you know what items end up working the best.

We’ll if you are in the DFW Area on Saturday, October 24, 2009, come out to Flagpole Hill at White Rock Lake between 10 am and 2 pm to have some fun with your family and friends while also benefiting boys with Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy.  The charity event and silent auction donations benefit Parent Project Muscular Dystrophy and help to fund research to End Duchennes.

This is the 5th Annual Sam’s Day in honor of Sam Killian, the son of one of my coworkers, who has Duchenne’s Muscular Dystrophy.

There will be all sorts of fun things for kids and families including bounce houses, inflatable slides, human hamster balls, a mobile gaming unit, face painters, food and more.

For More Information about Sam’s Day go to http://samsdaytexas.com/sams-day-texas-2009/

If you are unable to attend, please donate by going to http://www.parentprojectmd.org/Sam5.

A few warnings:

1) You can only claim one name so be sure to select well and double check for typos or spelling errors.

2) Your username is not transferable so don’t select someone else’s name to be funny since there will not be a way to transfer it.

3) The username must be 5 letters or longer.

To learn more about Facebooks Usernames, check out their help section.

Since my first name is only 4 letters and my married name is so common I stuck with the ongoing theme and selelected thesarayoung.  You can now get to my facebook account via http://www.Facebook.com/thesarayoung.

The two main articles are:

1. 35+ Online Shopping Cart Solutions for Your Business
2. 35 Free High-Quality E-Commerce Templates

Has anyone used the WP eCommerce Plugin?

Looking forward to hearing your feedback.

Register at : http://dallas.wordcamp.org/

Flexi Pages Widget: This widget is much more friendly than the pages sidebar widget because it lets you include, exclude and group pages in a flexible and quick way.

WordPress Database Backup: The WP-DB-Backup plugin allows you to create a backup of your wordpress database so if you ever accidentially delete your content, get hacked or have an issue with your hosting company you can recreate your site content quicly and easily.

UserVoice: If you are looking for customer feedback this is a great little plugin that simplfies the process so you don’t have to add the code to every page.

For those who are eBay affiliates, several people recommeded phpBay Pro and Search2Post.   There is a lite version of phpBay that is free called phpBay lite while the phpBay Pro costs $79 (do a google search and you can easily find a 20% coupon for it).  Search2Post is currently $29.95.

For anyone that owns a website, this is a great software to have.  What it does is prompts you to enter you important company information, you affiliate information if you have an affiliate program and the information of your hosting company.  It then generates 7 website legal forms in html format that you can then customize to match your site design.

The seven forms are:

1) Terms and conditions of use

2) Privacy Policy

3) Anti-Spam Policy

4) External Links Policy

5) Affiliate Agreement

6) DMCA Notice

7) Earnings Disclaimer

To learn more go to http://www.LegalFormsGenerator.com.