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A recent plugin addition to the community, this plugin, by default shows the 5 latest comments, with a gravatar of the commenter. I haven’t tested yet to see if you can show an excerpt of the comment, or it shows the whole thing. Interesting addition of adding the gravatar nonetheless.
Offers up a quick tip (though meant specifically for K2 hacking, I’m sure any gravatar user can adapt it) on linking a commenter’s avatar to their own blog, rather than back to the Gravatar web site. While I agree it’s good to promote gravatar’s site, (I use a link below the comments box on my personal site), I think it makes much more sense to let the avatar act as a link. I’m surprised I hadn’t seen this tip before.
Thought Mechanics
From the creator of Squible, and many other WP themes, comes this über cool mod, GravWall. Basically it takes gravatars from commentors on your site, and creates a “tag cloud” of sorts out of the images. Think a cross between tag cloud and flickr badge. Not a plugin per se, but installation seems straight forward.