Dunno why but all the blank (Gr)avatars on my Blog have suddenly turned Kaleidoscopic! [Laymanspeak] Avatars or Gravatars are the small images that appear beside the commenter’s name [/Laymanspeak]. WP users will have their own avatar and others will have a gravatar based on their email id. Till now people who had neither would have shown up blank but now I see wierd kaleidoscopic images!
They sure brighten up the comments page. Especially on posts which have hundreds of blank-avatar-ed comments. And in the case of my blog, such posts are dime-a-dozen. Head over to any of the Radio posts or the Contact page and enjoy the Kaleidoscopes 
[Update] Seems WP has already announced it! The Default Avatar Options announcement was made earlier today which not only speaks about the new Kaleidoscopic avatars – which are called Identicons btw – but there are also Wavatars and MonsterIDs to choose from as the avatar for commenters who don’t have any. WTG WordPress!
Posted by Rekha on May 8, 2008 at 21:51
they are colorful anyways
Posted by lazybug on May 11, 2008 at 00:06
I noticed them today. Sure look nice..a lot better than the blank avatars.
Posted by Chittaranjan on May 11, 2008 at 00:17
@Rekha: They are!
@LB: Yup. You can change them to MonsterID’s and Wavatars
Posted by Arul John on May 14, 2008 at 00:20
Gravatars have been around for a while. They probably got bored with the default dull avatar, so they decided to add some colour to it.
Posted by Chittaranjan on May 14, 2008 at 19:51
Yeah. Most comments have the empty ‘Mystery Man’ avatar which was kinda dull….so they spruced it up