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Avatars, according to Wikipedia, originates from the Sanskrit word Avatarawhich translates to incarnation in English. Avatar is the form the Supreme Beings assume in this world for some special purpose. Lord Vishnu, in Hindu mythology assumes ten different forms to help rid of the world of trouble and terror. Lord Vishnu assumes the forms of Matsya (Fish), Kurma (Tortoise), Varaha (Boar), Narasimha (half lion, half human), Vamana (Dwarf), ParasuRama, Rama, Krishna, Balarama, Kalki (This avatar is still to come).

AVATARS IN THE COMPUTING SENSE

But, in the computing sense of the word, Avatars are computer user's own representation of himself as a picture. The avatar could be the photograph of the person or a cartoon of himself or it could be his own representation of himself  based on the mood, likes, dislikes and other idiosyncrasies. This pictorial representation will represent the person in a forum or website or in blogs. These pictures can be simple or can be even animated. These icons or images can be in JPEG, JPG, GIF formats.

3D AVATARS

The Second Life and www.there.com are sites where the user can create 3D avatars of himself and cruise along in a 3D virtual reality world. These sites also provide a virtual reality world to play games, explore places, meet other people and just have fun.

RIGHT CLICK AVATARS

Choosing an avatar can be as simple as going through a list of categories like people, cartoons, flowers, nature etc and picking the one that suits the best from sites like www.avatarity.com, www.allavatars.com . Just right clicking on the picture and click on Save image as to save the avatar in the computer. Then, that image can be uploaded to the blog or on the forum to be the avatar.

YAHOO AVATARS

Yahoo Avatars can be created for every Yahoo ID. These avatars follow you in all Yahoo sites like the Yahoo Music, Yahoo Movies and in the Yahoo messenger chat and are fun and easy to make fromhttp://avatars.yahoo.com.  Yahoo avatars are created  from scratch by choosing on the preferred shape of the face, choosing the skin color, the hairstyles and accessories to the hair and face. These avatars can be made to show off different moods, emotions, clothes, add ons and festivities. The site is also very user-friendly and has a large array of clothing, backgrounds and extras of any kind to choose from.

OTHER AVATAR CREATION SITES

There are may other sites which create avatars similar to the Yahoo avatar site. www.doppleme.com, AvatarMaker lets you create a cartoon-like person while letting you choose the clothes and background. Zwinky is another popular avatar creation site. It includes tons of accessories, clothes and other stuff and is very highly rated. But to create zwinkies, the software has to be downloaded for the browser. It then loads the zwinky making software on the toolbar where it can be evoked in blogs, Instant Messengers and in websites. Zwinky also downloads SmileyCentral and other software along with the download.

WORDPRESS AVATARS

WordPress supports Gravatars (wavatars,identicons and monsterID plug-ins). Wavatars are automatically generated avatars based each email address. It creates a unique and memorable face for each person.Identicon plugins supported by WordPress automatically generates geometric pattern and is unique for each person based on his IP address.MonsterID creates a unique monster for each person. BLAVATAR (BLog+AVATAR) is the latest idea in WP. The general idea is to have a picture associated with the blog and to make it appear in the blog page in front of the URL in your blog (The favicon place). This picture also appears when you comment in someone else's blog.  Mighty interesting! And it was easy to make my blavatar too. Just click on the Settings in the top right corner of your blog page and upload a picture. Crop it if you need to and all set!

YOUR NAME AVATARS

Want to turn your name into an avatar? Trywww.turnyournameintoaface.com!

TALKING AVATARS

Sitepal is a commercial site where avatars are customized to talk about a particular product or a topic. These talking avatars come for a price but are interestinge and is very engaging for the viewer.