So what are Ch@tables.. umm.. smileys on steriods that live in a Yahoo! IMVironment™ ;-) For the correct answer (I was pretty close!) check out [Ch@tables: Intro] at the [Ch@tables] site. They work within the Ch@tables IMViroment which means you can still freely use your Yahoo Smileys as you normally would. Each Ch@table Character is animated and has its own sound bite.. the animations are very smooth accompanied by crystal clear sounds bites! The Ch@table's site is easy to navigate and the explainations while simple, certainly answer all your questions (links are available at the bottom of this page) work your way through the site so that you get an overall understanding of what they are, what they do and what will be available in the near future. One section of the site that you must stop at is [Preview Ch@tables] it's worth the effort of waiting for the images to download... there's 6 pages altogther and there really is something for everyone.. you sooo have to check it out! Some of the Ch@table Characters are just drop dead hilarious and of course so are the sound bites that accompany them... there's some real classics in there! Simply click on the arrow beneath each character to hear it's phrase.
This guy was on [Page 4 of Preview Ch@tables] and his sound bite is.. "you typing but your not making any sense!"
do I really have to wait till 2002 to get my hands on this one ;-)
Why 2002? Check out the notice at the bottom right side of each page, there's a wee guy stating... "Ch@tables will be available to the world in 1st February 2002 but you can get it from PepsiStuff.com now" so off to [PepsiStuff.com] I headed.. ok... I confess I'd already been there but it sorta mucks up the story if I start and then end ;-)
point to note: while the site references PepsiStuff.com you'll be sent through to... http://pepsistuff.yahoo.com


UPDATE: (02/11/01) email from David Prather thank you :-)
"they have now fixed collections 5 & 6 to run on the IMV correctly. Also if you have the newest verson of messenger you dont need the branded PEPSI messenger what you do need to do is get some pepsi points from caps of soada log into pepsistuff.com and sign in using the yahoo account. the go download the collections it very easily adds them to your list of chatables. now mind you you do have to do this for every person and every computer. It is not share ware. If you have not gotton the software once in a name then even if someone else has downloaded the new chatables you can not use them, you have to get them for all IDs on that computer."

Links...
[Ch@tables] (Ch@tables Main Site)
[Ch@tables: Intro] (Ch@tables Site)
[Ch@tables: What the Heck is a Ch@table] (Ch@tables Site)
[Ch@tables: What's Coming Up] (Ch@tables Site)
[Preview Ch@tables] (Ch@tables Site)
[Ch@tables: Sign Me Up!] (Ch@tables Site)
[Ch@tables: Help] (Ch@tables Site)
[help@chatables.com] (Ch@tables Email Address for support)
[Ch@tables Terms Of Use] (Ch@tables Site)
[Ch@tables Privacy Policy] (Ch@tables Site)
[Yahoo! Messenger - IMVironments™] (Yahoo! Site)
[Continue the PepsiStuff & Ch@table tour ->]