CHICAGO — Instead of saying to yourself, “There’s an app for that,” repeat after me: “There’s an emoji for that.” In our technology-inundated world of constantly being glued to the glowing screens of our iPhones and Androids, more apps are not the answer to our first-world problems. What we need is more communication. What we need, in other words, is more emoji.
But first, just what is emoji? If you don’t have access to a smartphone, you may be unfamiliar with this 21st-century phenomenon. Emoji is the enhanced Japanese term for those same old emoticons or picture characters that we Americans are used to seeing in Gchat or on Facebook (which now forces users to experience emoticons in Facebook comments, not just messages). Emoji includes a much wider variety of predetermined mini-images than any Gchat emoticon-user could dream of. To enable emoji on your iPhone, go to Settings > General > Keyboard > Keyboards > Add New Keyboard. Then add the Emoji keyboard. Emoji packages are available for pretty much any smartphone these days, so poke around enough and you’ll find them.
Read the full story on Hyperallergic: http://hyperallergic.com/58847/theres-an-emoji-for-that/
