[1]: http://robohash.org/
I've used several sites like StackOverflow that use the automatically generated images from Gravatar, and they really do make the site more pleasant. Additionally, they make it easier to visually follow who posted what in a discussion.
The one difference (unless I misunderstood the article) is that these sorts of images are generated randomly from a hash and so are basically guaranteed to be unique. I think this is a big advantage as having two identical avatars in a discussion would just make it visually confusing to see who is who.
Another thing I have experimented with is if you can upload a picture and create a hand drawn painting / image like Chris Dixon's or Fred Wilson's image which I think are brilliant in creating a brand and identity.
I think this might just be a programmer's way of (over)thinking it : "the users are unique, so the avatars must be unique, or chaos ensues". In actuality it will just be mildly confusing at best, but nothing earth shattering. You still have the name next to the avatar for reference, as well as the project, and with several dozens of them, most will be different still.
I can only imagine the number of people rushing to upload their own image in place of our former veep.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/81/Mac_OS_Logo_wi...
More just like this please.
The topic of the post is highly relevant to a lot of stuff, from thinking about UI problems, to iterating on a problem, to business decisions, to the avatar issue in specific, etc.
Much much better than the not so unusual fare of "Show HN: I made a clone of reddit in Visual Basic, come see" or "How we got burned storing customer credit card info in plain text on a in memory database on an old overclocked Pentium-III under a cupboard in our kitchen".
