GChat Emoticons & Codes
I love gchat and gtalk, because it takes away all the messy extra emoticons that everyone loves (usually on MSN). It is purely text-based, and the few emoticons it does have aren’t an eyesore, and are pretty text based as well. They also make use of alt codes, which is great. The following is a list of emoticons/features I’ve compiled with the experiments I’ve done:
Features
Bold: *this text is bolded* (because of the asteriks before and after the text, with no space)
Italics: _this text is italicized_ (because of the underscores before and after the text, with no space)
Strike: -this text is crossed out- (because of the hyphens before and after the text, with no space)
Emoticons (text : meaning)
<3 : heart
:(|) : monkey
\m/ : fist (rock-on)
:-o : shocked
:D / =D : open mouth smile
:( / =( : sad
x-( : angry
B-) : cool
:'( : teary
;) : wink
:-| : straight face (i think of this as the wtf)
;^) : big nose wink
:/ / =/ : doubt-it face
:P / =P : tongue sticking out
}:-) : the devil face
>.< : d’oh!
+/'\ : bell being struck
Gmail keeps improving and adding emoticons, so there will probably be more in the future. I’ll try to keep the post updated!
And for the alt-codes, check out www.altc-codes.net!
WordPress Pro Tip
If you want to turn off the annoying emoticons that automatically display on WordPress posts (i.e. showing :( as the actual emoticon), then simply go to your Dashboard > Settings > Writing and under “Formatting” uncheck the checkbox to “Convert emoticons to graphics on display”. You’ll be much happier for it =).
Saman's Tech Related Musings 
This article is actually a nice one it assists new the web visitors, who are wishing in favor of blogging.