Using Your Picture as Avatar
Just announced: Gravatar 2 has been released as public beta.
Gravatar was created by Tom Werner back in 2004 to provide a “Globally Recognised Avatar” from your email address, so that the same avatar image can be shown on blogs and content management systems that use Gravatar. It has grown in huge popularity over the last two years, and you will probably see it implemented on every other blogs you visit.
However because of its popularity, the system was always under heavy load which sometimes make blog sites using it almost unusable. The problem worsen in late 2006 — to a point that Tom has to close the registration system to prevent more signups, while he was working on the new revamped version.
Gravatar 2 was announced last month when Tom re-opened the website, however the registration was still closed. The fans were waiting, and a few have defected to other systems. But finally, the secret has been revealed today, and the Gravatar 2 beta has been released to everyone. You can now go there and sign up a gravatar, to have your picture displayed on web sites that use it.
Hmm. Not really a bargain. And what does it have anything to do with OzBargain?
OzBargain has been using Gravatar to power the avatar of each user right from the beginning. That is the picture you see right next to your name when you submit a new bargain, or a slightly larger picture next to the comments youu post. Currently, you will probably see a picture of a question mark there — that’s probably because you don’t have a gravatar. Sign up (using the same email address you used here), upload your picture and you should be able to see your own unique avatar here within 12 hours.
Now, I am pretty sick of seeing my own picture there on the front page. Go, get a gravatar and come back to post some great deals :)
Comments
Hmm. I use a caching system here for gravatar for up to 12 hours. I have to manually flush the cache and now gravatar is here :)
I have to say that I am not all that excited about the gravatar service, except it is currently the easiest way to get a universal personal avatar onto a website (from developers’ perspective). :(
Hmmm, I can still only see the placeholder, even though everything looks fine in my Gravatar account page.
Yeah, check it Scotty. I had change my to Port Power few months ago & it’s still North Melb on this site.
HueyCorba — I checked and it is indeed pulling down only the placeholder image. It could be a Gravatar issue.
Skippy — does your new avatar shows up in other blogs that employs gravatar? I can’t seem to be able to pull down your new avatar. Did you use the right email address?
I don’t use other blogs so dont know but it show up in Gravatar & same email as I registered here.
Here’s the pic from my Gravatar
Skippy’s icon still looks like North Melbourne to me?
I don’t know what else Gravatar wants me to do. Any suggestions, scotty?
I have actually switched to serving from Gravatar’s CDN directly instead of using my own caching system, so what you see is what Gravatar gives you. Well, sometimes you just have to be a bit patient — I won’t tell you how long it took HueyCobra’s to come through! :)
It works like a treat scotty.
The only problem is I’m not 100% happy with my avatar. Since they have to be s small, I would have thought the quality of the pic would be good. Mine is quite poor.
Anyone care to help me make a better Crown logo?
Here is one 80x80 that you can upload right into Gravatar:
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Yes boss! :)