If you have an account with Gmail, Blogger, Google Talk, Google Maps, or any number of other Google Services, Google has created a user profile for you. But historically that profile has been hard for other users to find because it has been represented by a string of characters like 107666412044887823210.

Now you can create a custom URL for your Google profile with your name or some other information. But there's a catch. If you already have a Gmail account, Google will apply your Gmail username automatically. So if you wanted to, say, have a Gmail account starting with your middle name, and claim a user profile with your first name, you're out of luck.

But if you don't already have a Gmail account or don't want to link your Google profile to your existing account, you can enter any name you want, as long as it's not already taken.

[via Digital Inspiration]