Blogosphere....

Amy has made the migration to LiveJournal. I checked things out over there, and was not impressed. It seems like a nice little community, but you need their software in order to blog. They tout this as an advantage, since you don't need to open a web browser to post. I see this as a disadvantage: with Blogger, you can post from any computer with a web browser without installing any software. So until I get a server and my own domain name, Blogger it is.

Since Blogger's commenting engine leaves a lot to be desired, I've been sticking with HaloScan for that service. I hopped over to HaloScan the other day to see if there was anything new. Lo and behold, I discovered they were beta testing these things called gravatars, or "globally recognized avatars." For those not in the know, an avatar is a little picture or icon used to represent you in chat rooms, on message boards, and now, apparently, in blogs and blog comments.

Thinking this was rather clever, I decided to activate gravatars in HaloScan, so you might want to go out and get one. It seems like kind of a neat way to leave a more personalized stamp on your comments, though not that I get many.

Checking out the Gravatar website, I found the proprieter to be a fairly interesting fellow, especially since he's running a contest celebrating the 100,000,000th gravatar served. He's well over that now, of course, but it's interesting to see that kind of positive response in the blogosphere.

I wish I was able to somehow have that kind of impact myself. Unfortunately, so long as I'm relying on such services as GeoCities, Blogger, Blog*Spot, and HaloScan, I'm kind of limited in what I can offer.