Glad you asked.

Ecoji is like Base64 encoding, but it's Base1024 and uses emojis instead of the alphabet. [via @codinghorror] For example:

$ echo "Base64 is so 1999, isn't there something better?" | ecoji🏗📩🎦🐇🎛📘🔯🚜💞😽🆖🐊🎱🥁🚄🌱💞😭💮🇵💢🕥🐭🔸🍉🚲🦑🐶💢🕥🔮🔺🍉📸🐮🌼👦🚟🥴📑 Read the rest

Vermont State Rep. Rebecca White (D-Windsor) introduced legislation in the Vermont House of Representatives that would enable citizens to pick one of six emoji to include on their vehicle's license plates. (Last year, Queensland, Australia also began offering emoji on plates.) The Vermont bill doesn't specify which emoji will be included as choices. From the short form description of bill H.866:

This bill proposes to create a new special registration plate with the choice of one of six emojis in addition to the distinctive number assigned by the Commissioner of Motor Vehicles or the numerals and letters selected by the registered owner of a vehicle as a vanity plate.

(Engadget)

Modified image based on original by Jaycarlcooper (CC BY-SA 3.0) Read the rest

Flag for Taiwan emoji is missing

Sure, Variety calls The Lighthouse a movie haunted by the "ghost of male loneliness," and the Hollywood Reporter says it's thick with "jolts of ever-intensifying insanity soaked in rum," but the official emoji are adorable. Spruce up your next text with the free download.

Finally, an emoji that says, “Yer fond of me lobster, ain’t ye?” #TheLighthouse Emoji Pack — now available on the App Store ? pic.twitter.com/ZU0VqB94UJ

— A24 (@A24) September 23, 2019

(Via Ross Rosenberg.) Read the rest

Holy crap! There's a toilet plunger that looks like a poop emoji on a stick.

This smiling anthropomorphic plunger is the work of Squatty Potty, the folks who really know how to market toilet stools.

Need it? (Don't kid yourself, you do.) It's available for ~$15.

Previously: Poop-themed toys rule New York Toy Fair

Thanks, Howie! Read the rest

When Hang Do Thi Duc published her work on the privacy implications of payment processor Venmo's "public-by-default" directory of payments, she did not release her dataset out of respect for the privacy of the Venmo users whose personal lives were on display in the data. Read the rest

About a year ago, professional yo-yoist (and hand-knit Pac-Man Icelandic peysa wearer) Doc Pop submitted a proposal for a yo-yo emoji. He's just learned that it was approved!

He explains how he made it happen (fascinating!) in his most recent PopCast:

Last year I started working on a proposal for a yo-yo emoji, with the helps of my friends at Emojination. It’s been an interesting experience and I’m really excited to say that it’s been officially accepted by the Unicode Consortium. Expect to see it in Unicode version 12, early next year.

Here's what the yo-yo emoji will look like:

You can submit an emoji proposal too. Check it out. Read the rest

An excellent post to the ISO/IEC JTC1 SC2 WG2 mailing list sums up critical feedback over recently approved emojis, including a fierce denunciation of the (IMHO) excellent "frowning pile of poo" emoji, which is viewed as a slippery slope to an entire "a range of emotions to PILE OF POO." Read the rest

In what could be considered the modern-day equivalent of gargoyles, architect Changiz Tehrani of Dutch firm Attika Architekten has added ornamental emojis to the facade of a Vathorst apartment building.

According to Wired, he pulled all 22 emojis, all faces, straight from the WhatsApp messaging app:

He selected only faces emojis, for their expressiveness and consistency. “They are really strong, recognizable shapes,” he says. “You recognize them immediately.”

Some architects aren't happy with Tehrani's design choices though. New York Institute of Technology architectural history and theory professor Sean Khorsandi is one of them. He told Wired,

“We’re using copious materials, and we’re taking up land. There is a responsibility that goes along with that. If everything is a joke; reduced to this disposable ‘I like it in the moment’ fad, that’s a dangerous attitude to have.”

photos by Bart van Hoek, Attika Architekten

(Pee-wee Herman) Read the rest

Over at The Nib, excellent historical cartoonist Andy Warner, author of the wonderful Brief Histories of Everyday Objects, tells the story of how the Unicode Consortium brings new emoji into our online lives. From The Nib:

Read the full comic: "Want a New Emoji? Good Luck." Read the rest

Texas and Chile have remarkably similar flags (though Chile got theirs first, by a matter of decades) and Texas doesn't have a Unicode-defined emoji for its flag (just a sprinkling of proprietary ones that do not cross platforms gracefully), so Texans have taken to using the Chilean flag emoji as a shorthand for the longhorn state. Read the rest

Apple's iOS 10.2 update contains two emoji inspired by David Bowie's Aladdin Sane character. The two emoji are named "Male singer" and "Female singer." See the new slew of emojis at Emojipedia. Read the rest

In 1999, Shigetaka Kurita created 176 digital icons that fit in a 12x12 pixel grid. Pagers, then cell phones, then smartphones ran with the emoji concept. Now MoMA is acquiring the original set, and MoMA's Paul Galloway will be discussing the collection at Emojicon this week. Read the rest

Update: This post previously left out some important info about the creator Noah Swartz (@SwartzCr) and the Twitter bot (@TinyDungeons) that creates the playable dungeons hosted by Andrew.

I make tiny dungeons meant to look like something out of Nethack - created by @swartzcr - Play my tweets at [this link]

Be sure to follow Noah and TinyDungeons for more fun!

Tiny Dungeon Player hosted by Andrew Faraday (aka @MarmiteJunction) lets you explore emoji-filled dungeons. Eat pizza for health, pick up money, and find the keys while avoiding devils, gators, ants, and other nasties. Read the rest

Francesca4me has created arguably the best Poop Emoji Cookie Cutters on the market, and they come in four different sizes. They include depressions for the eyes and mouth that can be filled with white icing, and the thin lines they cut halfway into the cookie give them the most accurate-looking result. Read the rest

The movie Dune was spectacular but incomprehensible: a boiling-down of a huge science fiction epic into a couple of hours of action. Star Kyle McLachlan, however, can fit the whole thing into a tweet, using only emoji. The Tweeter must awaken!

??✋????☀️????⏳??????????????〰?️⌛️??????????⚔? #dune https://t.co/bXwpdYC8jz

— Kyle MacLachlan (@Kyle_MacLachlan) August 16, 2016

Read the rest