Personally, I'm not a fan of it, as it makes more lines in local.
I DO use it when I use both visual non text emotes (/e plotting) but I keep to the "Hmmmmm *ponders*" as well.
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
it's called macroing.
you can even create buttons in your power trays.
[ QUOTE ]
If you wanted to send something over both local and SG chatter (radio nerwork) at the same time, then do this:
.
"Hey! Why are you taking me into that Council Base?1$$sg Hey! Why are you taking me into that CounccilBase?!"
[/ QUOTE ]
Personally, I'd do it like:
[hit enter and type:]
"Hey! Why are you taking me into that Council Base?1"
[follow by enter to send]
[enter to start typing]
[hit up, to get last line]
[hit Home to get to the start]
[type:]
"/sg "
this way, there's a second delay between the local and sg line, but both are there a few seconds earlier then typing teh same message twice 
@ShadowGhost & @Ghostie
The Grav Mistress, Mistress of Gravity
If you have nothing useful to say, you have two choices: Say something useless or stay quiet.
Personally I like something like
/e raises a hand and makes a little signal $$petsay_all <em ready weapons>
Or as I was going to use as a macro for a private eye
/e hands $target a business card. $$t $target, details of the card.
But yeah you can get some mad stuff going on especially with MMs though you can run out of space to type before you run out of stuff you want to do.
Brawling Cactus from a distant planet.
I guess the usefulness depends on how much you use the emote animations...
I'm mean the /e nod animation is pretty missable, much more obvious to put /e nods and get it showing up in the chat box...
Course, having to write out very long statements kinda reduces the spontaneity slightly...
Luckily for me, I type at the speed of blur. Although as I stated in the original post, use some combination thereof
For several weeks or more now I have been practising with a neat trick I discovered one night, that of combining the $$ command with roleplayed emotes. This simple pair of symbols will unlock a greater depth (in my humble opinion) to your roleplay, enabling many interesting combinations. I shall explain.
Let's say you want to say something in-character to someone and have your char laugh while doing so. All you need to do is put the emote command right into the sentense and combine the text with it. The seemingly standard method of doing this is:
"Oh come on! You really expect me to believe that? *laughs*"
which to me just seems wrong. However if you type it out using the formula "<your text here>$$e <non-emotable action>$$e <emote>" (or some combination thereof) it turns into this:
"Oh come ON! You really expect me to believe that?$$e throws their head back and laughs$$e laugh"
This will make your character say the conversational text in the current channel, emote that they are laughing, and also perform the /e laugh emote. For me, this makes the entire experience of roleplay much more flavoursome, especially if you try different combinations using the $$ command i.e.:
"/e stretches and yawns$$l I need to get going, got some sleeping to do"
"/e wrinkles their nose in disgust$$e goaway$$l Yeugh.. get out of here, you stink!"
"/e hiccups$$e wounded$$l Doesh anyone thinksh I've had chew mush to jrink?"
If you're imaginative, you can come up with other combinations of commands, that would work for a psychic telling local listeners one thing, and then giving another person different IC information via psychic signal:
"Those people you sent me to talk to weren't there, are you certain you gave me the right information?$$t <charname>, ::They were there actually, and attacked me. I had to arrest them all, but thought I'd best be discreet since they're friends of yours::"
If you wanted to send something over both local and SG chatter (radio nerwork) at the same time, then do this:
"Hey! Why are you taking me into that Council Base?1$$sg Hey! Why are you taking me into that CounccilBase?!"
Starting to get the picture? With some imagination, the use of the $$ command prompt can lend a useful twist to any otherwise ordinary roleplaying experience.
Try it for yourself, and see how it works for you.