New iConji language for the symbol-minded

Local technopreneur Kai Staats is setting out to prove that a picture is not worth a thousand words - it's worth one language-spanning, artistically rendered word that he hopes will connect the globe.

Staats, with the help of a team of creative and technical minds, launched iConji this month. iConji is a set of user-created 32x32-pixel symbols - a lexiConji - that represent words or ideas, not dissimilar from ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics or American Sign Language. The major difference, of course, is that the symbols are delivered electronically to computers, phones, tablets, etc. Therein lies the key to iConji adoption, Staats hopes.

He pointed out that just over a decade ago, almost half of the world's population had not used a telephone. By the end of 2008, mobile phone use was estimated to include 4 billion people - 60 percent of the global population. The program will start with applications for the Web, Facebook and iPhones. Users can customize their own database of symbols that will display as personalized keyboards. The keyboards, or "buckets," are limited only by the