what hosted blogging solution would you recomend?
flooha: Blogger, WordPress.com, Posterous, Tumblr, Weebly, TypePad, etc... are all good choices, each with their own pluses and minuses.  If you get to the point where you want more flexibility, and customization with your choice of plugins, please give Flooha a try, it's free. http://flooha.com  You can upgrade later to a traditional web hosting account with control panel, ssh, email, backups, cron jobs, forwarders, statistics, file manager, and more if you like the service.If you have questions, look me up on Google Talk as "flooha", or email me at matt [at] flooha [dot] com.