Archive for March, 2009

Global Avatars – Get Your Avatar to Show Up in a Blog Comment

Monday, March 9th, 2009

Many websites are developed with a CMS built in; many of those websites use blogging systems like Wordpress. FunkyTower.Com uses Wordpress.

Many of us bloggers have a comment system where readers can leave comments, but have you ever noticed that some comments seem to have the writer’s custom avatar while others do not? How do they do that? Well, it’s quite simple, really.

It’s called Gravatar (www.gravatar.com)

Gravatar is a free online avatar generator. Simply sign up with your e-mail address, upload an avatar, and you’re done. Now whenever you leave comments on a blog that has avatars enabled (with Gravatar support, which most do) your avatar will show up automatically. The way it works is Gravatar uses the e-mail address you enter when you leave a comment in conjunction to the e-mail you used to make the Gravatar account; when it finds your e-mail address in a comment post, it replaces the default avatar chosen by the blog owner with your avatar! Pretty neat, huh?

This will generally work. The few times it won’t are when the blog owner disables the support for “Gravatars” or just doesn’t have any sort of avatar system for comments. Other than that, when you leave comments here at FunkyTower.Com, or at other blogs like chris.pirillo.com (an amazing geek), you will have your very own, custom avatar.

Monitor or HDTV…or both?

Thursday, March 5th, 2009

When it comes to computers, I’m somewhat of a power user.  I’m also a big fan of certain TV shows and sometimes, I just want to watch TV in the comfort of my office; I’m in front of the computer half the time anyway.  Or say you’ve been spending hours upon hours in your home office working on that document and you need a break right around the same time that new episode of Family Guy comes on.  Maybe the only way to get a little privacey is to lock your self in the office, but you don’t want to just spend time on your computer – you’d rather be playing games on your Xbox, or watching a movie or watching TV.  Whatever your case, I have stumbled upon a VERY nice product.

I recently obtained a Samsung Touch of Color T260HD 26-Inch LCD HDTV Monitor.  That’s right, a 26″ LCD monitor with a TV tuner…and for less than $500.  “Well, David, that can’t be!  If such a product exists the quality and features must be poor and limited.”  Ah, ye of little faith…Believe it or not, this thing is a monster!

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