Have you heard of Gravatars? That name means G-lobally R-ecognized Avatar, and it’s a technology that’s been bouncing around the Internet for a while, albeit in relatively limited terms. I’m not sure why that would be, but I suppose it had something to do with the ability of it’s creators to support the load Gravatar’s popularity created.
See, the idea is that you setup an Avatar on their servers and any site that uses Gravatars in comments will automatically check to see if you have a Gravatar back at the “home base” and if so, display it by your comment. That requires a lot of through-put from whomever is running those servers, and these days, that responsible entity is Automattic, the makers of WordPress. I downloaded the plugin, and now Gravatars are enabled site-wide on the DragonFlyEye.Network.
So, if you comment on any article by any of the great bloggers on this site, your Gravatar will now go with you! Cool, eh?
Over the course of several years of life,Tom Belknap and frequently been called upon to shut the hell up. But since at least 2004 when this blog first began, he's stuck by his mentor, George Carlin, and never, ever, ever done so. Covering politics in Rochester has been a passion since watching his grandfather yell at the television whenever Ronald Reagan was on. Covering science and technology has been a passion ever since he laid his tiny fifth-grader fingers on a Radio Shack computer in Mr. Price's class.
I’ve actually created a Gravatar class if you click the link in my name. Loosely coupled and works like a dream – it also has a cache with an expiration date for the avatar – to save on loading times. It can merely load the avatar in locally.
Adam @ TalkPHP.com