I have been spending my time developing a NodeJS library that makes it easy to use the universal emoji shortcodes that can be found here:
http://www.emoji-cheat-sheet.com/
It follows a simple usage syntax where you simply pass in a string containing shortcodes, and get a string containing the appropriate Unicode characters as a result:
var codex = require("emoji-codex");
var string = "Hello! :relaxed:";
var translated = codex.translate(string);
You can find it here:
https://github.com/entropy-js/emoji-codex
Or simply:
npm install emoji-codex
Let me know what you think!