Gravatar - Universal Avatar

Gravatar -is the globally recognized avatar.Avatars are the virtual persona in the cyber world.They are your pixelized existence in two dimensions.Gravatar, is invented by Tom Werner an american web developer, is a service to have a single image identity on web.It will show your picture on content delivery platforms.The encrypted url helps to identity the avatar image.When a comment is posted on web forum or a blog using your mailid, the gravatar will be shown along the post.Comment platforms like Disqus support gravatar. The avatar is stored in one place and it will appear on several websites, blogs, forums.Once the image is changed and its reflected in all the web pages.This is web as a service.Adding avatar to your website is simple - add the url provided by gravtar API inside the img tag.

<img src="http://en.gravatar.com/avatar/2f89787e504e558c1efbe55e73a95df3" />

The hashing algorithm is used on the email id which is unique.Suppose we have a site and if we want to create a gravatar ..hash("ur@mail.com") => results the string which is encrypted by MD5 hashing algorithm.
Append that string to rest of cleaner URL API "http://en.gravatar.com/avatar/".
"http://en.gravatar.com/avatar/"+hash("ur@mail.com")+[.jpg -optional] .
These gravatars can be integrated with microformats,xfn,mails,forums,blogs,
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