Some examples, and meanings of popular smileys:

The meaning of the emoticon :>) is a “Big nose smiling”

The definition of the smiley <3 is… a heart (you romantic folks, don’t forget to use it with your sweethearts!)

The definition for ((())) is… (That’s a tricky one… haha) Hugs!

And if you want kisses, forget about your plain old XOXO, and go for :-X for a big wet kiss or :-{} to blow a big kiss!

Check out the rest of the list today for hundreds of more definitions!

And the news? 2 Recently updated smileys for Facebook for you to enjoy. Check them out:

• The shark emoticon -  - Use (^^^) to embed
• The Penguin emoticon – - Use <(”) to embed (Isn’t that a cool text emoticon by itself???)

And, btw, thanks to Peter Nichol for the tip!

There are two main types of emoticons you can currently use in skype: Regular emotion smileys and flag smileys. Use this nifty skype emoticons guide for your reference.

1. Copy this symbol into your MSN username or to your PM:        ⃡ ͋
2. Put an emoticon or smiley (use your favorite, like ) in the middle of the symbol that you have just copied. It should look like this:        ⃡:) ͋

If you are still having trouble, check out this cool YouTube movie with all the explanation:

Kamoji are the Japanese version of emoticons – they are sweet and everybit as crazy and inspiring as the people who created them. What makes Kamoji so different and unique is that unlike regular text smileys, they are read vertically or upside down. You just need to take a look at them and you immediately understand their meaning. Apparently the Japanese are much more liberal and creative in their usage of keyboard characters – not only colons, dots and commas make up these vivid symbols but also hearts, dollar signs, triangles and whatnot. You need to see to believe, and you will fall in love with them in a second.

OK, but what about the toy I promised? Here it comes. Apparently, one very cool Japanese toy manufacturer called Yujin decided to create his own real life version of the happy textual bunch. He made real plastic figurines which are combination of a doll and a crazy emoticon which can be bought and mailed worldwide. You must check out his website which is devoted to the figures.

The pricing seems to much a lot of sense too – A single doll costs less than 1 US Dollar, not to much to pay for such a cool playmate. Check out his site and the cool animated movie he created.

Want to use these cool emoticons yourself? Hurry now to our guide for using Japanese Text Emoticons.

First, What’s up with this grey smiley anyway?

OK, if you got to this page, you are probably familiar with the grey monstrosity. The default representation of a character or any user in the service is this grey smiley. Apparently, not a lot of user like their smiley. Quite a lot of them even despise it! Although we at cool-smileys.com quite like the image, we though it would be a good service for the community to tell you how eliminate this image, and replace it with a photo or anything else for that matter.

So, how do I replace the Yahoo Answers smiley face with a cool avatar?

Elementary, my friend, elementary. Here is the fool-proof system:

1. Create your Yahoo Avatar

OK. Time to create your avatar or what we like to call ‘your face online’. Go to Yahoo’s excellent service Yahoo Avatars, and just begin the process. We are quite sure you will manage to create a wonderful image for yourself.

2. Edit your Yahoo Answers profile

In the service, go to your profile page, and edit it. The link will be on the upper right side of your screen. If you can’t find it, check the image below:

my profile (upper right side of the screen)

click on “use my yahoo avatar”, scroll down and click “preview”. If you are happy with the result, click “ok”.

3. Using your own photo in Yahoo Answers

Easy as lemon pie. If you don’t already have one, go to Yahoo Profiles and create a profile for yourself. Click on “change photo“, and then on “add photo”. Now, please select the image you want to use from your computer. Save and select the option to use selected photo. Congrats, you are done.

You are the proud non-owner of a new Gray Yahoo Answers smiley

Like smileys anyway? Check out the Cool Smileys in our website. You will find some of them are much cooler than the ones you are familiar with!

Oh, any by the way, she just grabbed $50,000. Lucky Kate!

Just can't get enough of smileys?

Geeksugar.com (that always have great stuff for geeks) just posted about a super-cool shower curtain designed with a pattern of text emoticons and smileys. Obviously, you can always use our handy guide for text smileys if you need to use an emoticon, but if you are stuck in the shower, and can’t remember how to text a hug smiley for example, this curtain is just the thing for you.

We love everything with smileys, so we love this curtain. It goes for 15 bucks on Bed, Bath and Beyond, and it’s one of the happiest bath accessories I’ve seen in a while.

Although you can not use graphic smileys and emoticons in Twitter (at least for now – wait for updates in this space), there is a way to game the system and use cool emoticons in Twitter. Here is a quick example:

So, how to insert emoticons to twitter messages?

Easy! Use the following chart, choose the text symbol you like (especially useful are the  ☹ and ☺, but thee are tons of other cool symbols you can use), copy the symbol and paste it in your message. It works!

If you are a heavy twitter user don’t forget to bookmark this page!