http://www.mutantfrog.com/2009/10/15/emoji-in-gmail/
"Anyone receiving messages send from Japanese cell phones to their Gmail or Yahoo mail (or Hotmail?) account may have noticed that Emoji can be displayed in your web mail inbox. The newest update to Google Labs, the optional experimental features that can be enabled in the settings screen, now has a feature called “Extra Emoji”, which when enabled allows for the insertion of emoji into ordinary email messages. When I realized that emoji support was included in all iPhones, even though it was disabled by default in those sold outside of Japan, I predicted that they would soon be spreading worldwide, and it looks like I was right. As far as I know, this makes Gmail the first non-Japanese service to seamlessly implement emoji input, but expect Apple to enable emoji on non-Japanese iPhones and for more systems to support this gradually spreading standard in the near future."
"Anyone receiving messages send from Japanese cell phones to their Gmail or Yahoo mail (or Hotmail?) account may have noticed that Emoji can be displayed in your web mail inbox. The newest update to Google Labs, the optional experimental features that can be enabled in the settings screen, now has a feature called “Extra Emoji”, which when enabled allows for the insertion of emoji into ordinary email messages. When I realized that emoji support was included in all iPhones, even though it was disabled by default in those sold outside of Japan, I predicted that they would soon be spreading worldwide, and it looks like I was right. As far as I know, this makes Gmail the first non-Japanese service to seamlessly implement emoji input, but expect Apple to enable emoji on non-Japanese iPhones and for more systems to support this gradually spreading standard in the near future."
