Love them or hate them, if you use digital technology you will have met Smiley, and the other emoticons.
The ubiquitous graphic images, which are generated by pronunciation marks in sequence as a code, or are small graphic images, are a widely used form of visual shorthand designed to aid digital communication.
Now, US cartoonist Pat Byrnes has unveiled an expansion of the idea with the Smurks.
Pat explains the business as an attempt to allow subtler, more nuanced emotions for status updates people make on their social networks using mobile and touch phone apps (applications).