If you’ve been using Google for awhile, specifically Google Chat, then you know each of your contacts can have a contact image specified for them. Sometimes people don’t think about uploading an image for themselves, but you’d still like to have one so you can quickly recognize them when needed.
I thought I’d share this easy way to grab someone’s twitter avatar to use as their Google Contact profile image. It’s very simple.
First, you’ll open the user’s contact profile in your Google address book and click on their blank image place holder. You’ll then be presented with a way to grab an image from a variety of locations.
You’ll select “Web Address (URL)” as your option.
Next, go to their twitter profile URL (https://twitter.com/username) and right-click on their avatar image and select “Copy Image Location” in Firefox. In Internet Explorer, you’ll have to go to Image Properties and then copy the location from there.
Then just paste that URL into the “Image URL” field on the Google screen. You may be prompted to fit and crop the image a bit, but then you can save your changes and even suggest the image to be used by your contact.