I just saw an iPhone application that enhances the built in "messages" application to send emotions. What this application does is that it extends the functionality of the Keyboard that appears in notes or messages application, and user can send emotion icons as messages. This application doesn't work when the emotions are sent to other mobile devices (it works only with iPhone), but that's not important. What I'm wondering is, how they did that (extended the built in keyboard)? Do we have API's that let you extend the functionality like this?
They are part of the font set. called Emoji icons.
Apple's latest iPhone OS update brought cute little "Emoji" icons for Asian markets
To use them you need to use the (font) character code for each letter / emoji. I don't know what they are, but a quick google returns, abide a lot of spam, some codes worth trying. A quick script could be made to incrementally loop through each character code, thus finding them all.
A quick google:





