There's been quite a bit of talk about the 25th birthday of the emoticon over the last few days — and many of you have probably read the email which started it all off:

19-Sep-82 11:44    Scott E  Fahlman             
From: Scott E  Fahlman 
 
I propose that the following character sequence for joke markers:
        

        
Read it sideways.  Actually, it is probably more economical to mark
things that are NOT jokes, given current trends.  For this, use
        

You can read the full email thread on Scott Fahlman's pages on the Carnegie Mellon website.

Update: Jaanus has posted a photo of a commemorative banner on the Carnegie Mellon campus.

Skype has quite a few hidden emoticons. You can find a pretty comprehensive list on Chris Messina's site, but here are a few favourites of mine:

(drunk)

(poolparty)

(rock)

For the patriotic among you, you can type things like (flag:gb) (or one of any of the two-letter ISO country codes) to re-live those last night of the Proms moments.

Photo by SMN