Because it came up as a discussion on the last post, I decided to share with you guys how your little monster gravatars are generated.

It has nothing to do with
personality

or how big your heart is

First, it’s a “gravatar” and not an “avatar.” What’s the difference?

An avatar, in the computer world, is (according to Wikipedia)

An avatar is a computer user’s representation of himself/herself or alter ego, whether in the form of a three-dimensional model used in computer games,a two-dimensional icon (picture) used on Internet forums and other communities, or a text construct found on early systems such as MUDs. It is an “object” representing the embodiment of the user. The term “avatar” can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.

A gravatar is

Gravatar (an abbreviation for globally recognized avatar) is a service for providing globally-unique avatars which was created by Tom Werner. (Gravatar)

On Gravatar, users can register an account based on their email address, and upload an avatar to be associated with the account. Gravatar plugins are available for popular blogging software; when the user posts a comment on such a blog that requires an e-mail address, the blogging software checks whether that e-mail address has an associated avatar at Gravatar. If so, the Gravatar is shown along with the comment.

MonsterID is a plugin that runs within our blog that randomly generates little monsters for each of our commenters based on the information such as the users email address, ip address, etc. SOOOOO…. since that info is consistent with YOU throughout your internet on-goings, your little monster will be the same on any blog you participate in (it FOLLOWS you), IF the blog uses the MonsterID plugin.

The Monster is built by the program taking your “identifiers (IP, email, etc)” and associating them with a certain “part” in a collection of body parts provided by the creators of the script.

monster

A monster may have the same “body” as another, but the arms, legs, eye, hair– or color may be different.

Neat, huh?

Thought I’d share. Hope I didn’t go too far over anyone’s head (I tried to stay “un-geeky” in my explanations)