Happy Birthday : -) smiley! It's your time to shine! According to an MSNBC.com article, tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of the keystrokes heard around the world: the ever dreaded colon, hyphen, parenthesis e-smiley. The precursor to every slanty mouthed, money eyed, almost throwing up face we all love to add to our instant messages and e-mails to be extra cute and annoying. I was completely unaware that this world-famous smiley emoticon is a local phenomenon, created by one Scott E. Fahlman, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. According to him, he was the first ever to post this symbol on September 19, 1982 at 11:44 am on an online discussion board about the lack of emotion in online communication. "I propose the following character sequence for joke markers: :-)," wrote Fahlman. "Read it sideways."THNX Fahlman for making cyberspace so much cuter. ;-(
