Love them or hate them, miracle or menace, Emoji are standard message elements in Japan and have caught some favor among internet iPhone users (and TiPb Forum staff…)

The problem, however, is that there’s currently no standard way to encode the little mega-smileys across different carriers and platforms, leading to a lot of “translation” work in between. The solution?

engineers from Google and Apple have got together to try to propose an encoding for these emoji (they have identified 674 of them!) that can be added to the official standard ISO/IEC 10646, as can be seen in this document, Proposal for Encoding Emoji Symbols.

Maybe next Apple could work on not requiring complex, app-bound Emoji activation processes for non-Japanese iPhones? Sumo, tiny red cars, and weirdly smiling brown piles for everyone!

[Via What Japan Thinks, thanks Georgia for the tip!]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple and Google Propose Standardized Encoding for… Emoji!

Lots (and lots) of you have become smitten with Emoji, the cute, extra smiley-faces that come to us from Japan and work quite well on the iPhone. That is to say, they work quite well if you’ve hacked them on or downloaded one of the several apps that turns them on on-the-sly.

Sadly, that latter option is no longer going to be available. Ars Technica is reporting that Apple has issued a global take-down notice on any app that enables Emoji on non-Japanese iPhones. More specifically, they’ve told developers with apps that enable it to immediately remove that functionality:

Existing applications that offer Emoji enabling beyond their base functionality have been ordered to remove Emoji support. Fung told us that Apple has required an immediate update to his Typing Genius program with the Emoji support removed. This same order appears to have gone out to all developers whose App Store marketing text mentions an Emoji feature.

The good news is that if you’ve already installed one of these apps or otherwise enabled Emoji, the little guys should still work just fine for you — that is, until Apple decided to use their best-of-class software updating system for the iPhone to push out a new ROM that, one assumes, will break it.

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Apple Taking Down Emoji-Enabling Apps (or Making them Remove the Feature)

Act fast, because this ain’t gonna last, but if you’re still on iPhone OS 2.2 and want to activate Emoji as detailed by iJustine (see previous post for details), act fast and scoop up FrostyPlace now. It’s FREE for today only (and who knows what time zone today ends for them!)

(Via Daynah on Twitter)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Still on iPhone 2.2 and Want Emoji? FrostyPlace Free Right Now!

The inimitable iJustine has tastily blog snacked about an App Store goodie named frostyplace (iTunes / $0.99), a Japanese RSS reader that by-the-way works around the iPhone’s limitation of only allowing Emoji (the massive emoticon collection used in Japan that adds to smiley face things like panda bear, train station, and mountain) on it’s official Japanese carrier.

Basically, you download and install the app, use it to browse some Japanese RSS feeds (i had to do it for a couple minutes, exiting and re-doing it 3 times), and then the Emoji option will miraculously appear in your settings and you’re golden.

Check out her site for the details and instructions, but I tried it and it worked for me. Let us know how you do!

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Emoji Emoticons Enabled for All by frostyplace App!

• Our podcast feed
• Download Directly
• Subscribe via iTunes

Background Reading

• Review: Naked Case Touch-Through Acrylic Case
• Review: iPhone OS 2.2 Software
• The 2nd Gen iPod Touch is Faster than Your iPhone 3G
• Safari’s New Look (Daring Fireball)
• How To: Get Our iPhone Podcasts Over the Air
• Want Japanese Emoticons? Hack Enables Them On Any iPhone 2.2
• David Pogue Downgrades BlackBerry Storm to a Depression (NYT)

Ultimate iPhone Accessory Pack Contest

• This week’s way to enter? Register in our forums, or refer someone to our forums! (use the big refer button in your profile!)

Credits

Thanks to the the iPhone Blog Store for sponsoring the podcast, and to everyone who showed up for the live chat, or sent in questions!

Our music comes from the following sources:

• I Called You — iPhone Remix by Pete Leidy
via Sneakmove iPhone Ringtone Challenge

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

TiPb Presents: iPhone Live! Podcast #3

Ok, I will admit I have never heard of Emoji (“Picture Characters”) until it was announced that iPhone firmware 2.2 would support them. As it turns out, however, the only iPhones that were blessed with this feature were on Japan’s SoftBank network. Until now that is…

Important Note: If you are not familiar with editing code we here at TiPb do not recommended that you try this.

No matter what carrier you are with, you can now apply a hack that was found on Gizmodo that will enable Emoji emoticons. Keep in mind any iPhone will be able to display the icons hacked or not, while “other” phones out there need to support Emoji in order to display them.

You need to edit the file /User/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Preferences.plist on the device -> whether you use a jailbreak to achieve this or merely some iTunes backup editor is up to you. Add the following boolean key as ‘true’: KeyboardEmojiEverywhere. Then merely go to the Keyboards section of the Settings app, hit Japanese, and turn on Emoji. Will work for any text field/view in the OS, including on websites, AND including the titles of items on SpringBoard (e.g. if you save a bookmark to the home screen).

The easiest way to do this would be to Jailbreak and run your iPhone as a SFTP server for editing the config file. Again TiPb does not recommend you try this if you are not familiar with editing code.

[Via Gizmodo]

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

Want Japanese Emoticons? Hack Enables Them On Any iPhone 2.2

Developers are continuing to dig away at iPhone Firmware 2.2 Beta 1, and Macrumors brings word of a few more juicy finds:

First up is Google Street View for Maps, which Android wowed the crowds with at its recent unveiling. Just like location services, however, it looks like Apple and Google will be rolling it in for iPhone users soon enough.

Next is a Settings control to enable or disable the auto-correction feature of the keyboard. Many of our own readers have been asking for this, likely to get their SMS <3, 133t, can has lolcatz, or, you know… other languages on.

Lastly, Japanese Emoji icons seem to have finally found their place in the iPhone-verse.

Still no word, however, on the delayed Push Notification Server support or many of the other most griped about, still curiously omitted features like… oh, we don’t know… cut and goram paste?!

So, are these enough new features to wet your 2.2. appetite? Want more? And how important is it to you that Apple balance the amount of new features with the risk of instability a la 2.0?

(Macrumors screenshots after the jump…)

This is a story by the iPhone Blog. This feed is sponsored by The iPhone Blog Store.

iPhone 2.2: Google Street View, Auto-Correct Off, and Emoji