The only custom URL I have for by G+ business page is the *entire* business name in full, minus spaces - RedunserCreativeSolutions - needless to say, not much use to give out to people. No option is allowed to specify a shorter versions (say, RedunserCreative). I guess I will have to consider changing my business name, since Google evidently aren't going to budge. No wonder they're trying to hoodwink as many users as possible of their other products into acquiring a G+ profile - the way they're operating G+ definitely ain't selling the service to people as an alternative to Facebook or Twitter.

[I really want to like G+, but I keep being reminded that I'm supposed to use it the way Google wants me to rather than let me find a way that works for me. Hell, the main reason why I don't post more stuff to G+ is that many sites still don't have an option to share stuff to it, whereas it's trivially easy to do so to either Facebook or Twitter.]

He rolls off some good anecdotes from days gone by. Case in point, he mentions the big push for Intel's Itanium platform, which at one time was going to be the Next Big Thing. The Register were spot-on when they dubbed it "Itanic".

Also worth noting the reference to Blackberry being the one to beat - how times have changed...

Probably because so few people remember it's out there? I vaguely recall reading something about it when it was first announced, but I've not seen any mention of it since. *shrug*

I'm debating whether you're one of those spam autoposter AIs, or perhaps Bizarro...

I suspect they want to move people away from Windows 8 to 8.1 even faster than they wanted to get people away past Vista and onto 7.

Why the nag banner? Because they're Microsoft, that's why.

I'm currently running OSX 10.8.5 Mountain Lion on my iMac. Even thought the upgrade to Mavericks (10.9) is free, I'm holding back until I'm certain that the various reported problems with Mavericks and various Adobe Creative Cloud applications have been ironed out. Thankfully, the only banner I see regarding Mavericks appears in the Updates area of the Mac App Store.

Had a quick peek. It looks... different.

Ironically, Facebook's advertising is amongst the least intrusive around - for now. They also provide means to give them feedback (on the website - sadly, their mobile apps are lacking on that account, amongst many others) about which ads you prefer and which you don't want to see. Mind you, their lack of profiling data can show up at times, usually in the form of repeated generic ads being served up.

SocialFixer is a browser add-on, it runs inside of your browser on your computer. You're thinking of Facebook Apps, which interact with Facebook's back-end through the Facebook Platform, either as web services, traditional software or mobile/tablet apps.

Agree with your comment about us getting what we paid for with Facebook. Still disappointing, nonetheless, if only because of the potential longer-term repercussions for Facebook's viability - they seem to be increasingly undermining the service's usefulness in their quest for profits. :(

Nowadays I know most of the Circle by their real names, and have trouble remembering their /. usernames. D'oh! :P

-MT.
(Alan Ralph)

(Just popping in for a flying visit to Slashdot)

deviantART has been getting a LOT of spam and phishing attacks, in part because there are so many users on their likely to fall for such things. Hence disallowing posting from newly-created accounts. They also have an interstitial screen for all outbound links, which is annoying to say the least, and the latest has been to add a link symbol next to outbound links in messages.

Unfortunately, there are still ways around the spam filters. Most spam accounts I spot have laid low for a while before posting, so they don't get closed until people have reported the messages, by which time they've probably gotten what they came for. :( And the actual reporting system still needs some works.

(I'll have been a dA member for 10 years in a few weeks time. The site does look a lot better than it did back them, unlike a certain tech news site I can think of...)

-MT.

Broadcast routines through The View - then you'll get millions of brains connected.
Oh wait, higher brain functions. I guess that demographic won't work then.