Start some Sparks. In addition to following people, you can search for interesting stuff to share about particular topics in the Sparks section on the side menu of the main page. Click Sparks, and search for things that you're interested in or browse through the featured topics; if you want to pin a search on your sidebar for easy future access, click the Add Interest button under the search field.

Click through profile pictures. You can easily cycle through other people's profile pics by clicking on them.

Add some basic formatting. As with Google Talk and Google Buzz, you can add basic text styles to some of your Google Plus text. Paired asterisks (*text*) make bold text, paired underscores (_text_) make italics, and paired dashes (-text-) make strikethroughs.

Patrick Miller covers HDTVs and How-To's for PCWorld. Follow him on or .