Social media news: Now you can get a custom URL for your Google+ profile

Today when I opened my email the first thing I saw was a message from Google+. It said that from now on all Google+ users can get personalized URLs for their profiles. If you remember, until now your Google+ address was a strange and long combination of numbers. All you need to do is click on "Get custom URL" button in the message and you will be taken to a new page where you need to type in your cell phone number. Don't forget to choose the appropriate country. They will send you an SMS with the code that you need to type in a separate box and that's it! You have a custom URL! Mine is https://www.google.com/+OlgaArakelyan

The only thing that I don't really like is one line in the Terms of Service for the custom URL which says that Google may decide to charge people for using custom URLs. Although in this case we will be able to stop using them. Which made me think again that despite all its high monetization Facebook is not so bad after all, because you are not charged any money for a pretty address of your Facebook page. The important condition there is a certain number of fans, not the money. I hope they don't change this policy even if Google starts charging money for it.

Are you going to get your own custom URL for your Google+ profile? What do you think about the news?

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10 interesting facts about the Russian language

In my previous post I promised to follow with the interesting info about some other languages. So here are 10 facts about the Russian language which might be of interest to those who are studying it. If you would like to have this list in Russian, please contact me and I will send it to you by email. So, what do I find interesting about my native language? 1. Russian has about 500,000 words, but only 2,000-2,500 of them are used frequently. 100 most frequently used words make 20% of all written and oral speech. A high school graduate's vocabulary usually has 1,500 to 4,000 words. Those who have graduated from a higher educational institution normally have a richer vocabulary consisting of approximately 8,000 words. 2. It's compulsory for all astronauts in the international space station to learn Russian, so we can call it an international language of space :)

15 interesting facts about the English language

I prepared this list for one of my English classes. And then it dawned on me that I can share it with you, too! So here are 15 facts about the English language that I find very interesting. Hope you do, too ;) Rudyard Kipling was fired as a reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. His dismissal letter said, "I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English language. This isn't a kindergarten for amateur writers." No language has more synonyms than English.

Clients vs translators: how do we show that we're honest?

This is a personal post, and I'd really like to hear the opinion of my colleagues about such situations and how to deal with them. My situation is kind of like the one described in Mox's blog . In December a new prospective client wrote to me asking about my availabiility for a new project. When I read the overall description of the project, I got really interested in it. But the client needed to know exactly how much time it would take and how much it would cost. No problem, just send me the text to look through or a part of it so I could get the gist of the style, level of complexity etc. In the reply that person just stated the wordcount, but there was no sample. I thought, maybe they didn't understand me. English is not my native language after all. In my reply, I stated the estimated time and cost based on the client's wordcount, but I repeated the request to see a part of the text. And then the person thanked me and ... disappeared.

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