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We have a shortcut URL that's somewhat configurable at hostmar.co, it's how we do the software icons. While it's not a small URL you could do something like  in chat. Ideally a userscript that rewrites :) :D :( etc in to an image is the best way to go.
A blog will never work for Ask Ubuntu, there's nothing of consequence in Ask Ubuntu that's Ask specific, and everything about the subject matter is already covered in other blogs within the community. If you're interested in a blog, it'd be better if you wrote for existing Ubuntu blogs than try to compete with them.
This is what we've been doing for years without issue. Just use *action that you're doing*. If it really bothers you, you can write a greasemonkey script to do that for you
gnome-shell implies gnome, there's really no need to tag it twice. Shell is just a bad tag because it has multiple meanings we can't force one or the other because they're both technically valid. So shell should remain synonymous with command-line and those wanting to refer to the desktop environment should just use gnome-shell
