As AZUMA Junichi, I think emoji's / emoticons could be the first truly universal language. The heavy use of emoji's in our daily written conversations by phone or computer are truly amazing. And this will only increase with "mobile connectedness".

So how about standardization of emoticons and emoji's? Here are some resources to start with. If you want to add more resources, please do so in the comments.
Emoji standardization (DoCoMo, EzWeb, Softbank)
Emoji - Emoticon compatibility chart (Japan / Europe)
Skype vs. Regular Emoticons (see also: Skype Hidden Emoticons Video and Secret Skype Emoticons (de))
Jaiku Icons
Kaoani - animated emoji's
Gamer Culture Emoticons: here and there
Anime Emoticons
Ascii Emoji Photoset


Emoji (絵文字)
Emoji are japanese picture (絵) characters (文字) and not as Tim Bray meant emotion characters. More information and links can be found at Wikipedia.

Emoticons
Emoticon article on Wikipedia is quite thorough.


Related:
Design of Signage Systems. via NotasD


Not related, but interesting nonetheless:
When I was in Tokyo in 2003 I wondered why the top level domain .ch was so interesting for my hosts - they created a japanese website with a .ch domain at that moment. I guess I found the answer now: 2ch or 2channel (Wikipedia entry).


And last but not least: QR Code for mobile bookmarking of this post



http://d.kaywa.com/ +2020400102 (Short Code for this blog) + 845 (blog post ID)
=
http://qrcode.kaywa.com/img.php?s=4&d=http%3A%2F%2Fd.kaywa.com%2F2020400102845

Informative to see how the journalists at Welt Kompakt work with QR Codes and nice to see our tools in this video:

“Die wunderbare Welt der Quadrate”

Via Jepblog