Something which may be of use to all bloggers and social app builders is that it is pretty easy to pull someones twitter profile photo in RoR heres the code :

# call the twitter api
url = 'http://twitter.com/users/show/show.xml?email='+CGI.escape(test@test.test)

# get the XML data as a string
xml_data = Net::HTTP.get_response(URI.parse(url)).body

# extract profile image tag information
doc = REXML::Document.new(xml_data)
profile_image = nil
doc.elements.each('user/profile_image_url') do |ele|
        profile_image = ele.text
end
	
# if we have an image and its not a default avatar then continue
if profile_image and ! profile_image.include? "static.twitter.com"
	begin
		profile_image=profile_image.gsub("_normal","_bigger")
		filename="/tmp/"+rand(100000).to_s+File.extname(profile_image).downcase
		file=open(filename,"w")
		file.write(open(profile_image).read)
		file.close
		# do as you will with the avatar
	rescue
		#fail
	end
else
	#fail
end