This Saturday, Facebook users get to replace the string of numbers Facebook has assigned them as a profile name with a personalized URL based on their real name, or another alias they choose.

This means Facebook users can find each other by remembering the address of a profile–tough to do currently, since profiles are currently in a format like www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=12345678. If users have opted to make their profiles public, anyone could get to them by typing in the new URLs too.

What’s the point? Some people want to use their Facebook page like a personal home page, viewable to anyone searching for them. One obstacle now is that many people have the same first and last names, making searching difficult. Facebook says the change will make it easier to find people or businesses through its own site or through Google or other search engines, since the new URLs can be unique and more easily remembered.

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Logging on to Gmail or other email service has become a routine of daily life, completed without a thought. What would you do, however, if you woke up tomorrow, plugged in your user name and password as you always do, but then received an unfamiliar message: “User name and password do not match”?

If you’re a Gmail user, what you’ll want to do after a few more unsuccessful, increasingly frantic attempts is to speak with a Google customer support representative, post haste. But that’s not an option. Google doesn’t offer a toll-free number and a live person to resolve the ordinary user’s problems.

Discussion forums abound with tales of woe from Gmail customers who have found themselves locked out of their account for days or even weeks.

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