:-) Turns 25 Tomorrow

By Michael Santo
Executive Editor, RealTechNews

Yes, it’s been called a smiley face, but it’s the first emoticon. We’re not talking about the funky smiley images I can produce here by doing this BTW, but the original ASCII smiley face.

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message.

To mark the anniversary Wednesday, Fahlman and his colleagues are starting an annual student contest for innovation in technology-assisted, person-to-person communication. The Smiley Award, sponsored by Yahoo Inc., carries a $500 cash prize. Source: MSNBC

We Say: What can I say, but “:-)”?