It's rare that a birthday gets missed around here, but shocking that the 30th birthday of the emoticon may have gone unnoticed had I not seen the story on the NY Daily News.

The happy face has become a universally loved symbol, and spawned many a child.

Think how unhappy it would have looked had we ignored it!

The News reports: The computer symbol for “not serious” or now more generally “happiness,” made up of a colon, dash and a right parenthesis, was born into existence at 11:44 a.m. on September 19, 1982, when it was posted on an online bulletin board by Carnegie Mellon computer scientist Scott Fahlman.

“If someone made a sarcastic remark, a few readers would fail to get the joke, and each of them would post a lengthy diatribe in response,” Fahlman explained in a post on Carnegie Mellon’s website about the invention of the sideways smile.

“The problem caused some of us to suggest (only half seriously) that maybe it would be a good idea to explicitly mark posts that were not to be taken seriously,” he added. “In the midst of that discussion it occurred to me that the character sequence :-) would be an elegant solution ... So I suggested that.”

Fahlman also suggested the reverse — what has come to be known as a sad face — by using the other parenthesis marker.

Read more: http://www.nydailyne...2#ixzz26yhHhuNr

Happy Birthday~~~

I like your new avatar!