gravatar – spicing my off_code time
Posted by satya on November 21, 2008
Working like a bulley these days, my boss gave me 2 days off from coding, so that i can regroup and resume with full force. I was wandering all over the web these 2days……..1st day was kinda drowzy. The second day today………it got lighten up when i found GRAVATAR.
The idea behind it is very simple. Its to assign a universal PIC/Image to a user(identified by email address) and display this pic in all the websites which implement GRAVATAR.
Supposing, i register my email with gravatar and upload a pic for it. Now, if a site implements GRAVATAR and if im also liked with that site( say registered), then my pic uploaded in gravatar can be available to that site.
Supposing i wrote some comments in that site, along with name + body of the comment, the site can also display my pic.
So, which ever site implements GRAVATR, if i have my foot print in dat site(say registerd, commented….what ever), then that site display my pic from GRAVATAR along with my name 
The cool things are :
1) The implementor site doesnot have to spend space on saving my image. Its GRAVATARS headache.
2) People can recognize my comments looking at my pic…So when GRAVATAR goes big…number of sites implement this…….then every where i’ll be recognized with this pic. So no matter even if i have a diff user_name, i dont have 2 worry…..people can recognize me.
3) From the developers point of views (us), its quite simple…asa….counting 123., trust me 
.
I wnna implement this in my product asap…infact right away…..though im off-coding……i can resist the temptation. Lemme break the rule.
The way the implementor website can get the pic is 2 simple steps:
a) The image url shud start with “http://www.gravatar.com/avatar/”
b) a) + The MD5 encoded string of the LOWED_CASED email address.
How to generate the MS5 string depends on the programming lang (server side) u follow:
Better follow this link : GRAVATAR URL GENERATION
By the way, i used ruby rails for this……u can use any of the php/.net/……the list never ends
Hope u got it working………….If any buzz’s do comment here….i’ld luv 2 respond !
