It would be cool if you could allow for user commenting/voting so that people could add and build up cultural context for them rather than just having the spec definition. If you got enough of a community around that it could become very useful. Kinda like Urban Dictionary for Emoji.
Show HN: I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant, so I made WhatMoji.com
31–40 of 81 posts
Re: Show HN: I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant, so I made WhatMoji.com
#32I feel like http://emojipedia.org/ is a better website with more information. I've been regularly using it since Emoji have become a thing. It gives more context about the meaning of symbols, is easier to search the other way, and also shows how the image appears on various different platforms.
Re: Show HN: I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant, so I made WhatMoji.com
#33whatmoji.com/[the emoji here] would have have been cool.
Cool idea, this should work now: http://whatmoji.com/ edit: Looks like HN strips emoji so I can't link to it, but you can try it out by visiting http://whatmoji.com/TEXT_HERE !
You just need to encode the URL for HN to accept it
Re: Show HN: I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant, so I made WhatMoji.com
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
True, but it does give you a hint at least. I would have never guessed that this was a shrimp for example: http://whatmoji.com/?i=b65555fbf55380ec0970a060b2457527
Except so many of them are culturally specific, like the horn emoji on the front page has roots in postal systems (both in Japan and Europe). This page doesn't tell you that. Even this random website does a better job of giving context: http://emojipedia.org/postal-horn/
Well, Emoji are originally Japanese so you always have to keep that in mind.
Re: Show HN: I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant, so I made WhatMoji.com
#35Earlier quoted context omitted.
Except so many of them are culturally specific, like the horn emoji on the front page has roots in postal systems (both in Japan and Europe). This page doesn't tell you that. Even this random website does a better job of giving context: http://emojipedia.org/postal-horn/
Well, Emoji are originally Japanese so you always have to keep that in mind.
The point is "what is this emoji?" Knowing emoji started in Japan still doesn't tell you what the emoji is or means!
Re: Show HN: I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant, so I made WhatMoji.com
#36There was this project called emoji.js I think that you embed in your site and transforms all emoji it sees into Apple Emoji, the standard, and works for everyone even without emoji installed. give it a shot.
Re: Show HN: I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant, so I made WhatMoji.com
#37I expected this to be the solution for my broken Linux font experience. In Linux there is no support for Emoji and every time someone uses them in a website to display so semi-important idea I get frustrated because the only thing I see is a blank character or a rectangular border. I thought this service was something like "discover what this non-supported character actually is" more than "discover what is the meaning of this character".
I know about the existence of alternatives [1][2] but I wish there was native support for this trend in Linux. And yes, I know emoji is actually an old thing from Japan companies, but is still a young trend in terms of western usage.
I wonder how difficult would be to copy all those images from the Apple font and create a custom TTF so I can get the fancy colored symbols in my computer. Of course, distribution of that file would be against Apple's copyright (or maybe not, I don't know) but I don't care.
EDIT1: Actually this is what I was expecting to be; I forgot I had disabled JavaScript in my browser. Still would like to have an official font with Emoji support for Linux.
EDIT2: Thanks to gtk40 I found [3] now I can create my own font with those images.
[1] https://github.com/eosrei/emojione-color-font
Re: Show HN: I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant, so I made WhatMoji.com
#38And it could work also for emoticons. For example ":P" is hard to understand. Good idea
Yeah, it's totally hard to understand :P
Re: Show HN: I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant, so I made WhatMoji.com
#39I expected this to be the solution for my broken Linux font experience. In Linux there is no support for Emoji and every time someone uses them in a website to display so semi-important idea I get frustrated because the only thing I see is a blank character or a rectangular border. I thought this service was something like "discover what this non-supported character actually is" more than "discover what is the meanin…
> I thought this service was something like "discover what this non-supported character actually is" more than "discover what is the meaning of this character".
I don't see how when the title starts "I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant"
Re: Show HN: I couldn't figure out what an Emoji meant, so I made WhatMoji.com
#40I expected this to be the solution for my broken Linux font experience. In Linux there is no support for Emoji and every time someone uses them in a website to display so semi-important idea I get frustrated because the only thing I see is a blank character or a rectangular border. I thought this service was something like "discover what this non-supported character actually is" more than "discover what is the meanin…
They render fine for me with Firefox on Arch Linux, although they are only black-and-white. Apparently the "Symbola" font is being used.