Facebook confirms personalised URL offer

Facebook will offer personalised usernames and corresponding URLs, says TG Daily.

"From the beginning of Facebook, people have used their real names to share and connect with the people they know. This authenticity helps to create a trusted environment because you know the identity of the people and things on Facebook.

“The one place, though, where your identity wasn't reflected was in the Web address for your profile or the Facebook Pages you administer," explained Blaise DiPersia in a company blog post. "The URL was just a randomly assigned number like 'id=592952074'. That soon will change."

A revised version of a £513 million IT application to monitor offenders as they move through the criminal justice system has been rolled out to the UK's first three prisons ‑ with a further four to follow by the end of this month ‑ some two years behind schedule, says Computing.co.uk.

The controversial project ‑ originally known as C-Nomis, but renamed Prison Nomis ‑ was the focus of a highly critical National Audit Office report in March, which branded it “expensive and ultimately unsuccessful”.

But Phil Wheatley, director-general of the National Offender Management Service, said he hoped the new version would deliver significant benefits.

France's top legal body has struck down a key provision of new legislation aimed at punishing Internet pirates, reports the BBC.

The law, approved by deputies last month, gives officials the power to cut Web access for those caught repeatedly downloading protected material.

But the Constitutional Council ruled that only a judge could bar people from the Web, describing access to online services as a human right.

The shuttle Endeavour is poised for blast-off on Saturday on one of the most complex space station assembly missions yet attempted: a gruelling 16-day flight to attach a Japanese experiment platform, deliver critical spare parts, replace massive solar array batteries, and swap out a station crew member, says CNet.

Five spacewalks by four astronauts will be required, along with carefully choreographed, near daily use of three robot arms, two on the station and one aboard the space shuttle, to move equipment, spare parts, experiments and spacewalkers from one work site to another.

Complicating the choreography, the station must host a combined crew of 13 - six full-time station astronauts and seven shuttle visitors - for the first time, putting the lab's life support systems, including its new water recycling system, toilets, oxygen generators, and carbon dioxide scrubbers, to the test.