Why did we do this? We wanted to save you time and share our thoughts with you about what's worth looking at and what's not. Our focus is quality so we wanted to find the cream of emoticon applications that will get you free emoticons for MSN, Yahoo emoticons and smileys for AIM. We found some applications with emoticons for email too. We looked for 25 applications, but we found there were only 20 worth talking about.
We hope you find this little list useful. If you don't want to install software, and let's face it, not everyone does - take a look at our overview of the emoticon websites we like.
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Incredimail
This software is the best email emoticon software on the market. The software allows you to insert funny smiley faces into email as well as providing email backgrounds. It also has some MSN icons but no yahoo smileys. |
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Smiley Central
It's hard to escape Smiley Central. Their ads are all over emoticon websites. This free smiley software has 10,000 icons that can be downloaded free of charge. The icon graphics are really high quality - the only annoying thing is the toolbar that installs itself at the same time. |
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Max Plugs
This software is designed to insert emoticons into email (includes Outlook emoticons). If you're prepared to pay, then this could be for you. The full version costs $21 to download. |
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Get Smile
This software has some nicely designed emoticons to download. The software has emoticons for MSN Messenger as well as email emoticons. |
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Buddy Icons
This software contains a bunch of cool AIM buddy icons. They're all animated emoticons - the graphics are good quality. Good for AIM users. |
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From Concentrate Software
Use a Mac and want emoticons for Mac? If you want to add emoticons to iChat this is the site to use. |
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Smiley Icons
This is a nice piece of software to download. The smileys can be used as messenger smileys, email smiley faces and more. |
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Post Smile
This smiley software is very cool and the smiley face designs are very good quality. The software has loads of different add-on packs including love smileys, animal smileys and lots more. There is a free version but the full version costs $19.95 to download. |
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Smileys Zone
Download this to add more AIM smileys if you're an AIM user who wants to use more than the default AIM smiley faces. |
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Rick Betting Tools
This software is pretty basic but pretty cool nevertheless. Create text messages using emoticons. Download is free. |
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Hotbar
This software is similar to Smiley Central in that it installs a toolbar into your browser. The toolbar has loads of free smiley faces, screensavers, eCards and more. |
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Scorpio Software
A nice little program to download. Their emoticons are of average quality and are mainly designed for email. |
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Sweet IM
Like Smiley Central this software also installs a toolbar. The icons are average quality, nowhere near as good as Smiley Central. |
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Emoticons Plus
This smiley download software is from some dodgy guys in China as far as we can figure out. The software installs emoticons but watch out for suspect adware and spyware. |
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Help Bytes
Download this software to get Yahoo smileys. The software will automatically add a large collection of new smileys to Yahoo Messenger. |
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Adroz
Adroz provides a number of MSN Messenger software programs to download. Smiley and icon stealer is probably the best - it allows you to 'steal' other people's display images and Yahoo smileys. |
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Pretticons
Choose from 'pretty emoticons' or 'space emoticons'. The main purpose of the emoticons are for email and forums. The choice of categories is quite random! |
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Avatar Zone
Download avatars for Yahoo Messenger. The site is quite basic and like Emo Installer the download contains adware. |
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Sherv
This site contains a collection of MSN Messenger emoticon software - unfortunately they are all stuffed with adware and spyware. |
