Raph Koster gives a brief demo of MetaPlace:

Twenty-five years ago, Carnegie Mellon University professor Scott E. Fahlman says, he was the first to use three keystrokes — a colon followed by a hyphen and a parenthesis — as a horizontal “smiley face” in a computer message.

Read the rest at CNN: turns 25

Sept. 19th is quite an auspicious date… in addition to the smiley’s birthday, it is of course also International Talk Like a Pirate Day!