Bonds Are a 'Safe' Investment: A Big Lie Gets Even Bigger
Walmart's New Health Food Push: Is It Too Hard to Swallow?
It's a birthday that all of us can celebrate. Today the smiley face formed by tying a colon, hyphen, and parentheses is 25 years old. At 11:44 AM on September 19, 1982, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman typed the symbol on an early online message board, proposing that :-) be used to to denote a comment meant to be taken lightly.
Now known as emoticons, these smiley faces have dozens of different variations, and messaging programs like AOL Instant Messenger transform ;) into a colorful figure that can be customized. I have Groucho Marx smiley faces. Pretty cool stuff.
Smiley faces have even crept into more formal business-related communications as the New York Times notes:
Goldman Earnings Sink After Buffett Dividend
Johnson & Johnson's Income Falls 23%
Burberry Shares Leap on Sales Update
