Oct 7, 2008 | Spicen up your Gchat Status

Who knew? You can copy and paste the following cool Unicode characters into your Gchat (Gmail Gtalk) status bar to spice things there! Also, if you type in

a word surrounded by an underscore, like _Really_ busy, the status will italicize the first word to make it look like Really busy.

a word surrounded by an asterisk, like *Really* busy, the status will italicize the first word to make it look like Really busy.

★ solid star
☆ star
☠ skull and crossbones
☢ radioactive
☣ biohazard
☪ crescent moon and star
☭ hammer and sickle
☮ peace
☯ yin yang
☹ frown
☺ smiley
☽ moon
♀ female
♂ male
♔ king
♕ queen
♘ knight
♡ heart
♩ note
♪ eighth note
♫ bar note
♬ double bar
✡ star of david
✌ victory

Note: some of these appear to fail in IE. Hm.