By Annalyn S. Jusay
A blog needs a sort of distinguishing feature, like having a mole or a tattoo. This is where favicons (pronounced fav-eye-cons) and favatars come in handy. This week we talk to young netrepreneur Aaron Jay Sy Cabuling who recently launched www.myfavatar.com. This Electronics and Communications Engineering graduate from UP Diliman conceived the site one day like a flash of inspiration. It is the latest addition to a number of sites dealing with easy to upload blog icons and the big difference is that it's all-Pinoy. More in the following interview:Q. What are favicons and favatars?
A. A FAVorites ICON is an icon associated with a particular website. It is the icon used in place of the standard icon next to the name in the Favorites/Bookmarks list. It is the image on the left of the URL. Favicons can be readily seen in browsers other than IE6 and below. For IE, the standard IE icon may need to be drag to the right a couple of times, and restarted to be able to see the favicon (if it is available).
A favatar is a favicon on another website. It is a visual representation (avatar) of a person associated with the website. The name is derived from favicon and avatar. A favatar is the image seen in blog comments representing a commenter.
Q. What are their uses for a blog?
A. Blogs with favicons are easy to identify and recognize (especially true for tabbed browsers). It gives identity to blogs and makes it look more professional. Likewise, comments are easily associated with a particular commenter (assuming the blog where they left a comment is favatar-enabled).
Q. What made you conceptualize the site www.myfavatar.com? When did you launch it?
A. It just popped into my head one evening while lying in a coach and thinking of ways to earn extra money. Not much into programming, I asked my friend to help me in the development of the website. After some learning, studying and finding time to work on the project, we officially launched the alpha version last March 14, 2006.
Q. What kind of programming do you use for the site?
A. PHP for speed, stability, security and simplicity.
Q. How do I use the favicons/favatars for my site, for example with Blogger or Wordpress?
A. Generally, after registering and uploading the image you want to become your favicon/favatar, you only need to copy and paste the "Favicon Code" inside the head element (between and ) of your blog. As of today, instructions for Blogger/Blogspot, Mo'time, Xanga, WordPress are given in the website. Moreover, you do not need to update the code if you want to change your favicon/favatar in the future. You can even change it as much as you like.
As of the moment, favatar plugins are available for Movable Type, Nucleus CMS, Textpattern, and WordPress.
Q. Who are the people who have registered in your site so far and what's their profiles?
A. Only a handful have registered so far (130+). I haven't yet done a complete analysis, but on the average, users are between 20-40 years old with an almost equal number of males and females. Most blogs are personal, political and about the internet. Users are from all over the world with the majority coming from English-speaking countries, Europe and the Asia.
Q. Do you hope to earn money from the site? How?
A. Hopefully, yes. We're currently employing 3rd party advertisers (e.g. AdSense of Google, AdBrite), but in future we hope to handle our own.
Q. Any interesting feedbacks from your users?
A. I'll just quote the two feedbacks the site received so far.
"...keep offering a wonderful service. Now my two blogs have their own personalized avatars. It's very professional. Great idea!"
"...I love my Favatar in address bar. It rocks!!!!"
Q. Do you hope to launch other sites in the future that will be of significance to bloggers?
A. If a great idea comes, then yes. But for now, I want to improve and make MyFavatar better first.
Q. Are you a blogger yourself?
A. Yes, but I do not post consistently... an average of 2 posts a month.
