One of the important steps in developing an online profile is choosing an avatar, and using it consistently, so that your online friends and associates come to recognize you, and your work. An “avatar” is that little thumbnail-sized photo of you, or of a graphic you like that accompanies your profile on most social networking sites, blogs, discussion forums, etc..

To easily have your avatar display in the comment sections of most Wordpress and Blogger.com blogs, and in many discussion forums is to use a “Gravatar,” which is a “globally recognized avatar.”

Following is a tutorial on how to grab one of this nifty little gizmos (the tutorial will open in full-screen).

This weekend, I tried to help my parents get a new converter box, so that they’ll be ready for the federal switchover from analogue to digital TV next year (February 17, 2009). The government, in its infinite wisdom (yes, that’s sarcasm), is issuing $40 checks to help with the expense for people who don’t have digital T.V., or cable.

The catch is that those coupons have to be used in 90 days, or the coupons expire - and the stores are having trouble keeping the “coupon eligible converter boxes” (CELB’s) in stock. I tried several places online, and they were also out of stock. So, what are you supposed to do, if you can’t buy a converter box before your coupons expire?

Well, you can re-order the coupons, and try again. That’s what we’re doing. We’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

What we don’t understand is why the coupons expire. We all know that the government has no money of its own, so it’s using the money it gets from us, the taxpayers, to give us either $40 or $80 (depending on whether you ask for one coupon or two - two being the limit per household) of our own money back to help pay for something it decided to do without asking us in the first place. But we only have 90 days to use our money - whether or not the stores have the merchandise. Then the oh-so-generous “offer” expires.

Good grief. Will Rogers was right when he said,

“Be glad you’re not getting all of the government you pay for.”

Thankfully, if you’re using cable, satellite or the phone company for your T.V., you won’t need one of these boxes. Everyone who’s stuck with roof top antennaes or rabbit ears, however, probably will. U.S. Rep Tom Cole (R-OK) has some very helpful information on his site, here, and the official coupon site is here (retailer list here).

(Also on GCV)

Any of us that blog know there’s really not enough space in the sidebar for all the stuff we’d like to put there already…so why do we find new gadgets irresistible? I don’t know, and as you can see, there is no room on this blog for ANYTHING else in the sidebar, but…

I discovered a wonderful little time-waster today, called Google Gadgets for your Webpage (thanks, a lot, “Quick” Online Tips!) There are 40,156 of these little suckers - all pretty cool.

You can browse all 40K+, or use the menu and search feature to look for “Web 2.0,” or “political” gadgets. You can look for “FOX News” ones, or “conservative” ones (Be careful, some of those are liberals making fun of conservatives - but that game works both ways!). There are also all sorts of tools, financial tips, sports, fun and games, and tech gadgets, as well as a seemingly endless supply of quotes for the day.

The directions say to add the code to the html on your blog, but most of them also work in a sidebar widget (Be sure to size them properly, and check to make sure they look good in the smaller sizes - some don’t).

Some update daily and some update each time the page refreshes. Go ahead, you know you want to try it. And be careful…these are like Pringles (Once you pop, you can’t stop).