Hmm... That's something I've not heard about! Yes, they worked and agreed to not follow the links posted in the comments by supporting the rel="nofollow" tag but err. ignore commercial blogs? Nope I don't think so! This way google would have to ignore its own google blog

I would really love to know the source where you got the above info from!

And as for avatars, I had messed up with the usergroup permissions. Thanks for bringing it to my notice, It's working now! You may upload a custom avatar in the User CP.