If you've ever stumbled across the Betabeat tumblr, you know just how integral we consider animated emoticons to the practice of good journalism. Our Skype chats are littered them. In the New York Times today, emoji aficionado Jenna Wortham explores how the Japanese import is catching on internationally in no small part due to iOS5.

Although emojis have been available in app form for years, the latest update to Apple's operating system has a pre-installed library of the stuff that can be activated as an "international keyboard." (Here's a video that shows you how.) Apple declined to explain why it was added now, but the Times conjectures that it was likely due to global standardization of the emoji format last year.

Pop culture-wise, the language has been embraced. The month-old Narratives in Emoji tumblr uses emoji to depict things like the cast of "Parks and Recreation" or the difference between what really happens at Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving in your mind. Even back in 2009, KickStarter's Fred Benenson, who worked for Creative Commons at the time, used the funding platform to finance Emoji Dick, the story of Moby Dick, as told by a Japanese teenager.

However, Ms. Wortham warns, there may still be some cultural barriers keeping emojis out of the mainstream:

But some things may be lost in translation in emoji’s journey. For example, the emoji of a smiling coil of human waste is a popular way to express dissatisfaction in Japan, but doesn’t have quite the same resonance in the United States. And while the iPhone has emoji for steaming bowls of ramen, balls of rice and cups of sake, there aren’t any for common Western items like pizza.

Come to Skype! We got your pizza party right here:

This will go great with our Sonar

The newest version of Apple's mobile operating system rolled out today, and foursquare is leveraging the new technology to launch Radar, the first passive feature the company has ever released.

"Up till now, you had to open the app to learn what was going on around you. A lot of times you had to check in before you saw what friends were in your area," said Alex Rainert, foursquare's head of product. "Now we can deliver users information that is contextual and relevant without them having to do anything at all."

So for example if a foursquare user is in a new part of their city and walks close to a restaurant on their "To Do" list, the phone can ping them with an alert. During a night on the town, the Radar feature can sense when a group of friends has checked in close to a user and give them a heads up.

"This is the next stage in the evolution of foursquare," said Rainert. "The hardware and software have finally caught up to our vision of making it easy and fun for users to get more out of the world around them."

Along with foursquare's new List feature, this goes a long way towards making the service a powerful tool for travelers who want help exploring a new locale. And for heavy users who don't mind a few push notifications, this turns the app into a powerful, passive sensor for the nightlife around them.

Now if only we could get iOS5 to download...

via Huffington Post

Apple's WWDC keynote address yesterday seemed like a study in Newton's law: the tech version. For every glorified new product or feature announcement, there was an equal and opposite wave of anger and frustration from competitors who suddenly found themselves up against a behemoth that doesn't play well with others--or from Apple developers who found themselves cast outside the walled garden. The piecemeal rollouts (glaring absent an iPhone 5 update) may not have seemed like much individually, but arrows were slung high and low, hitting companies big and small. Without further ado, here's the angry mob Steve Jobs left in his wake.

iMessage: Pissed off Research In Motion, GroupMe, and Kik

Announcing a messaging service that mimics popular BBM features like delivery confirmation, the ability to tell when a message has been read, or when sometime is typing a reply just when RIM is almost down for the count? Yeesh, that's gotta burn. But the carcasses really piled up further down the food chain with group messaging service GroupMe, the belle of SXSW, and free real-time texting service Kik. We hardly knew ye.

iCloud: Pissed off Amazon and Google

Mere weeks after Amazon announced Cloud Drive and Google launched Music Beta, here comes Steve-o with a cloud storage service for files like photos and music that's completely free for 5GB, which means he probably even ticked off his own employees, at least the ones who had been working on Apple's pricier MobileMe. Google hasn't yet established a pricing plan. But iCloud only costs $24.99 per year, with allowances for up to 25,000 songs compared to Amazon's Cloud Drive costs $50 per year for $5,000 songs.  However, Amazon did the same price- undercutting maneuver with the Kindle when Barnes & Noble came out with the Nook. Jeff Bezos may think Jobs is a bitch, but he has to feel the same way about karma.

Safari's "Reading List": Pissed off Instapaper and many, many more.

Before turning sage about Apple's bookmarking service, which lets you save links to read later, Instapaper founder Marco Arment probably tweeted it best: "Shit."

Not mentioning the Lodsys debacle: Pissed off developers being sued by Lodsys.

In case you haven't been following the patent wars going on over at Apple, here's the short version. Lodsys, a patent-firm company--a mock Twitter account describes them as "a bunch of crooks who never invented anything"--is suing Apple developers for using an in-app payment technology. Apple came out in defense of its third-party developers. But at WWDC, there was nary a mention of their collective turmoil. Sean Woodhouse, an iOS developer and founder of Itty Bitty Apps tweeted:

Apple still pushing in app purchase with Lodsys outstanding? What's up with that? #wwdc

Stephen Vanderpool, another iOS developer at IMDB.com expressed a similar consternation:

You know what I didn't hear anything about in the #wwdc keynote? Lodsys.

Baking Twitter into iOS5: Pissed off Facebook and Instagram.

This does not bode well for Mark Zuckerberg's plan to wedge Facebook Connect between you and, well, everything on the internet. Likewise for hockey-stick growth-happy Instagram now that Apple has a photo integration for Twitter built-in.

Various assorted other features in iOS5: Pissed off Microsoft and Google.

There were so many similarities between iOS5 and Microsoft’s Windows Phone 7 that Joe Belfiore, director of Windows Phone, considered it a compliment, tweeting:

Feeling flattered today. Lots of great WP ideas headed to iOS. Camera button/above lock, auto-upload of pics, better notifications … wi-fi sync, built-in twitter, background download service, short-messaging chats (though we do Facebook!)

Although perhaps in this case, Microsoft just wants to feel like its still relevant enough to steal from. We think there was more thievery from Chrome's direction. With iOS5, you sign in to map and Twitters when you open the computer and then save files in iCloud. Deja-vu, Larry and Sergey?

Steve Jobs: Pissed off Paul Allen. We're just guessing here, but Allen has to spread the haterade around, right? That amount of vitriol can't just be all Bill Gates all of the time.

Who did we miss? Let us know in the comments!

At first, Marco, thinking he's just live-tweeting the WWDC keynote like every other Apple acolyte, comments on Jobs' appearance:

Sad - Jobs looked and sounded awful. This might be his last keynote.

But, perhaps out of guilt for acknowledging the master's weakness, he makes sure we know he believes the hype:

Lion-optimized apps with resume, autosave, etc. are going to be awesome.

Minutes later, things take a rapid turn for the worst when Arment, along with the rest of the world, hears Apple announce "Reading List," an easy way to save stories to read later on that syncs across iOS devices. So easy, in fact, that Twitter starts wondering if Apple just killed Instapaper. Marco is rendered speechless. Well, almost:

Shit.

But like any good entrepreneur, Marco pivots and takes a look at the bloodshed all around him, including dead bodies at Dropbox, Sparrow, Readability, Remember the Milk, Facebook, tweeting:

At least they're hitting a lot of other apps too. Could be worse.

Then, he moves on bargaining:

Glad I've invested in social and editorial features. Not dead yet!

After surveying the circumstances, Marco decides a little flattery never hurt anyone.

Steve's on fire now. Looks and sounds far better.

Before ending the ride with some dignity:

I would never try to use the legal system to prevent others from competing with me, even if I had infinite money and lawyers.

Atta boy. But listen, Marco, if you're on the floor, clicking your way between five different live-blogs, call us! We can talk you down. Like for instance the fact that it's only Safari? See, we can make you feel better. Shh, it's gonna be okay.

UPDATE: Now that the roller coaster has come to a halt, Mr. Arment is "tentatively optimistic," he says on his blog.

Our world changes quickly, especially on the cutting edge, and I really don’t know what’s going to happen. (Nobody does.) But the more potential scenarios I consider, the more likely it seems that Safari’s Reading List is either going to have no noticeable effect on Instapaper, or it will improve sales dramatically. Time will tell.

Like we said, we're here if you need us.

First off, Apple has built Twitter right into iOS5. Scott Forstall, VP of iOS, said onstage that, "Users send more than 1 billion Tweets a week. We know Twitter is an important app for our users, so we want to make it easier to use." To that aim, Apple is making Twitter the default, on click service for sharing photos, location, article and video."

This is going to be a big challenge to apps like Instagram and Foursquare. Millions of iPhone users who are familiar with the more mainstream Twitter may begin using this service as their default for photo sharing and location.

Jobs came back onstage to announce iCloud. "We’ve been working about this for some time and we’er really excited about it … About 10 years ago, we realized that the PC was going to become the center of our digital lives, the place where we stored out photos and our music…. And it did become that and it worked well for a while, but recently it’s broken down. iCloud stores your content in the cloud and automatically pushes it to all your devices. But it’s also completely integrated with your apps, so there’s nothing new to learn. It just all works."

photo via Engadget

Oh yeah, and it's free.

It syncs email, calendar and contacts everywhere for free. Daily backup of music, photos and apps data. Auto upload and sync of documents. That's gonna be a huge amount of data to store. It will be 1000 photos on iOS for 30 days. Free. Dropbox is hurting right now.

Who else got dinged? Well, Apple announced an internal set of push notifications, kind like BBM, that will function as a default service in place of apps like GroupMe or Kik.

Watch Instapaper's Marco Arment travel along an emotional roller coaster as the Apple announcement's went live.