<p>We have old <a href="http://gravatar.com">Gravatar</a>, <a href="http://microformats.org/wiki/hAvatar">hAvatar</a>, <a href="http://pavatar.com/">pAvatar</a> (discussed <a href="http://alcidesfonseca.com/blog/265">here</a>) and now we have <a href="http://www.openvatar.com/">Openvatar</a>.</p>

<p>This last one is based on OpenID, <s>but uses email as the identifier&#8230; This makes no sense!</s>(Read comments) and is centralized! OpenID is all about using your own <span class="caps">URL</span> as you main identity (although email <a href="http://brad.livejournal.com/2357444.html">seems possible too</a>) so you should fetch your avatar based on your <span class="caps">URL</span>. Both pAvatar and hAvatar do that correctly, but hAvatar uses another piece of technology I love (and makes all sense together with OpenID) that are the microformats (hCard in this case).</p>

<p>So I&#8217;d like all this not-that-good solutions to stop coming, and that we all focus on adopting the one that makes sense to the majority of people.</p>