I'm not sure if anyones noticed or not, but it looks like google is now letting your google + profile pic show in the serps, or in other words, the serps rich snippet functionality is giving more credence to authorship when posts and profiles can be reasonably associated. Here's a google search for twt poll, twt poll - Google Search Is there a serp that stands out on the first page so you can see what I mean?

In digging up how to do this, I ran across this article which shows how to do it How To Set Up Google Authorship Markup, The Real Simple Way

I've gone through the step by step and have verified as green according to the article. Now only time will tell if my profile pic shows up in the serps. Anyways, I wanted to share it here.

Good Luck,
Chris