From: James Kass (thunder-bird@earthlink.net)
Date: Thu Jan 01 2009 - 13:31:33 CST
John Hudson wrote,
>> Then why on Earth are we discussing *encoding as text* something that is
>> unlikely to be ever transmitted or rendered as text in the first place?
>
>Because some telecom companies are currently *transmitting* a basic set
>of emoji as text, using non-standardised encoding. Presumably, if they
>had chosen a different mechanism, some other standards organisation
>would be debating the merits of emoji. The fact that a different
>mechanism is going to be necessary to realise the full potential of
>emoji -- as an open set, as personalised representations of individuals
>within user communities -- strongly suggests to me that proposal to
>encode the currently employed subset of emoji is the solution to the
>wrong problem.
"Individual avatars for Docomo mobile deco mails"
http://www.cscoutjapan.com/en/index.php/tag/docomo/
"...and Docomo has the cool mail features. It is the
“Deco Mail” feature on Docomo, the ability to create
elaborate flash animated text messages, that makes
the carrier a hit among the school girl set. "
"Subscribers to the ¥315 (about $3) a month service
first design their animated likeness by manipulating
facial details such as eyes, skin tone, and hair—according
to Cybird there are over 14 billion possible combinations. "
"Then, for each mail, users can choose a costume and pose,
which is really an elaborate form of the emoticon. "
"It is also possible to create a number of characters, such
as of friends or family members, and place them together
in the same mail."
"Far from a fad, these individualized characters are
becoming the norm as a generation of girls learns
(and has likely quickly become accustomed) to portray
their individual style through digitized doppelgangers."
Wow, over fourteen billion new characters to propose!
You know, when I copy/pasted the above quotes from
the web page into Notepad, text colors and some italic
styling did not survive the operation.
Isn't this some kind of serious problem needing our
immediate attention?
I wanted to show you some of these cool new characters,
but I couldn't figure out how to copy/paste them into
the plain text editor. Gee, I am so sad.
Best regards,
James Kass
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