I don't what they're talking about...

...but animated avatars are NOT gay. That is how they were described to me by some of my technology friends on the golf course this weekend. Fred at A VC has one of SitePal's animated avatars anchored in the upper right hand corner of his blog. His likeness has been creeping us all out for some time now as the talking head follows your cursor around. Fred's been good about regularly changing the message on his, and has put his animated self to good use. Oddcast, the geniuses who generate SitePal's avatars, are one of Union Square Venture’s portfolio company's. Given the enormous success that that partnership usually generates, I'd say that being a USV portfolio company is positive proof of animated avatars non-gayness. The creepiness factor alone that these avatars possess made it a must have for the Intravenus De Milo blog.

I’m also quite proud of myself for figuring out how to manipulate the HTML code of my Blogger template to anchor my avatar into the margin all on my own (SitePal actaully makes it pretty easy). I quickly put my scene together, and in my zeal to get one posted, probably didn’t spend enough time in the model selection process, thus I ended up with one who bares only slight resemblance to me sans my goatee, but looks more like a heavy set Ted Danson. I’ve got another character put together that I feel is a more accurate depiction, but can’t seem to replace it in SitePal with the one currently active. (Fred HELP!)

SitePal also offers custom avatar modeling. You simply provide them a photo and they animate it for you. This I’d like to do. I’d have to decide on a youthful Tony Alva, the 42 year old domesticated one, or one somewhere in between. Nonetheless, I will try to put my avatar to good use and be as creative as possible with it. The ability to change backgrounds, upload audio, change many physical attributes, etc… is a great deal of fun. Thanks Fred for turning me on to this.