Rev2.org

When you sign up to use Google+ – which lots of us have already done – you will get a unique URL for your profile.  However the URL is far from being attractive since it consists of a series of boring numbers.  There is no way to identify who the profile might belong to if all you have is the standard URL that Google+ provides you with.

However you can change all that if you go to a site called MyPlus.name.  The website has been created to enable you to change the URL and you can change it to whatever works for you.

This is good news for anyone using Google+ to make business connections.  Instead of having a series of numbers after the plus.google.com address, you can have your name instead.  Or you could choose the name of your business if you wish – it is entirely up to you.

This will undoubtedly help people who want their profiles to be more recognisable in terms of the URL.  It will also help people when it comes to ranking their profiles in the search engines, since recognisable words will always be far better than numbers.

MyPlus.name is a simple site and an effective one as well.  At the bottom it says that it is not owned by Google, but it then adds the word ‘yet’.  One wonders if Google will change that soon.

If you have the Google +1 button on your website – or indeed if you have visited any website that features it in recent times – you may have noticed that it used to be rather slow to appear.

However that has all changed now, thanks to Google’s efforts to improve the relatively new +1 service.  The button appears as a small rectangular box with +1 inside it.  It is easy to recognise because the top of the rectangle contains the four colours Google is known for – red, blue, green and yellow, in that order.  Now whenever you load a web page with the +1 button on it, it will appear three times as quickly as it did before.

The update has only been announced in the last day or so, which means that it may take a few days to be rolled out completely.  If you still get slow rendering at the moment it should change very soon, so that it loads just as quickly as the rest of any web page it appears on.

The good news – apart from the faster loading itself of course – is that anyone who features the Google +1 button on their website doesn’t have to do anything to get the faster service.  Everything is done by Google and all the webmaster has to do is sit back and wait for the faster service to arrive.

It is a nice tweak from Google, and perhaps one that is overdue.

If you’re on the go a lot or just need to be sure you can access your desktop or office computer quickly when you need to, then remote access software is probably something you’ve looked at.  Now, you can do it from your iPad or iPhone using apps like LogMeIn Ignition.

The app works pretty simply: you get a streamed image of exactly what’s on your desktop to your iOS device.  This means you can access any of your home or office computer’s applications, files, etc. through the iPad or iPhone’s screen and make changes, transfer files, send emails, etc. as if you were sitting in front of your computer itself.

Using yoru finger, you can move your computer’s mouse pointer, click/scroll/drag/double-tap the mouse, zoom in and out on things on the screen so you can avoid things looking too  small, and more.

With the new updates that were just added to Ignition, you can fully integrate your iPad with your home or office computer and even transfer files between remote computer systems from the device.

The app is feature-rich, runs very well, and has a lot of options for maximizing your productivity while using it.  You can even put your computer on “sleep” mode and wake them up via the app for access, then put them back to sleep when you’re done.  So no leaving your system on and wasting electricity.

A very nice app and worth having if you’re on the go.