Playing with my potty while on the iPhone

In the beginning was the “Have a nice day” guy. He was put on buttons, coffee mugs, bumper stickers and T-shirts.

Then one day, someone didn’t have a nice day. And he was put on even more buttons, coffee mugs, bumper stickers and T-shirts.

Along came the computer and the smilie was born—the “Have a nice day” guy made of ASCII characters. Why someone didn’t think of this when the typewriter was invented, I don’t know.

Emoticon was born—the “Have a nice day” guy with a nose and more attitude.

And Emoticon begat Wingdings—single characters with less attitude but more meaning.

Along comes Japan with emoji—because flat black & white pictures weren’t good enough.

Emoji are really kind of fun but under-utilized unless you’re a mobile phone user. To use emoji you have to be a smart-phone user not just a flip-phone user solidly versed in T9.

When Apple introduced emoji into the keyboard in iOS 5, it included lots of little pictures to make texting on the device more fun and expressive. My favorite is the happy little turd.

The mere thought anyone would put a happy face on a turd makes me smile too. What makes me happier is to hear his name. Want to hear his name?

What makes me happier is to hear his name.
Want to hear his name?

First, make sure your iPhone can display the emoji keyboard. Tap the Notes application and create a new note. If you don’t see a little globe icon to the left of the spacebar then you need to add the emoji keyboard.

To add the emoji keyboard:

1. Click the Home button at the bottom of your iOS device.
2. Tap the Settings button.
3. Scroll down and tap General > International > Keyboards.
4. Tap Add New Keyboard and choose Emoji.

The Emoji keyboard appears below your primary keyboard.

Now, go back to the Notes app and you should see the globe icon. Tap the globe and you’ll see a slew of emoji icons grouped by category at the bottom. Make sure the category with the smilie face is selected and swipe left a few times until you see the happy little turd.

Tap the icon to insert it into your note.

In your note select the happy little turd and hold until a menu appears above it. In this picture I only see the options to Cut, Copy and Paste. We’re missing something.

To add more options to the menu:

1. Click the Home button at the bottom of your iOS device again.
2. Tap the Settings button.
3. Scroll down and tap General > Accessibility > Speak Selection.
4. Enable Speak Selection.

Optionally, you can choose a voice and adjust the rate of speech.

Go back to the Notes app again and tap and hold the happy little turd until the menu appears. This time you should see a Speak option.

Tap Speak to hear the happy little turd’s name.