I hadn't either, at least until the other day when I stumbled across voiceemotion.com. It provides, as the name suggests, an application to be used with "voice" and from what I gather, just as we use graphic smileys in our standard IM (Instant Messenger) text conversations, vEmotion (free) allows us to use what appears to be emotions that generate sound into our voice conversations or we can even set background music... strange but true ;)

It appears both parties don't need to be using vEmotion, only the sender needs to install it which is a grand idea as nothing is worse than having some funky new application you want to test drive and then struggling to find another user or worse still, having to persuade someone that they too should clutter up their computer with something you know little or nothing about that may or may not be a 5 minute wonder *blush* Another vEmotion perk, it appears it can be used with many of the big voice enabled IMs (Instant Messengers) like MSN® Messenger, Google™ Talk, Yahoo!® Messenger, AIM™, Skype™ and QQ which seems a seriously cool idea as it removes the need to download yet another IM.

vEmotion features list (as shown at vEmotion Downloads)....
- Basic functions to send voice emotions/sound effects and set background music for IM talks.
- Ability to run as an stand-alone audio player.
- Playing MP3 and WAVE formatted audio files.
- Add audio files in two methods: "Add Files" and "Add Directory".
- Remove audio file from the voice emotion list or the background music list.
- Set local volume and volume of partners separately.
- Mute microphone, so as to enhance audio quality for your partners.
- Online software upgrade

Personally I'm not a big "voice" user, I haven't found the need for it yet but I'm sure one day I will, until then I'll just happily plonk around with the standard graphic smileys and no background music but if you're a voice user who has used vEmotion then it would be really great to hear from you :)

vEmotion Information
download from http://www.voiceemotion.com/downloads.htm
version 0.8.0.9 beta
released 27 November 2005
file name:
    vEmotion_0.8.0.9.exe (without demo music)
    download size: 1.4mb
    vEmotion_0.8.0.9_with_demo.exe (with demo music)
   download size: 3.22mb
supported operating systems: Windows 2000, Windows XP

Links
Homepage ~ http://www.voiceemotion.com/
Download ~ http://www.voiceemotion.com/downloads.htm
Support forum ~ http://www.voiceemotion.com/forum/index.php
Contact ~ http://www.voiceemotion.com/contacts.htm