>>>>>RE: "Wrong dog breath." WOW, can smell people's breath over the INTERNET??? You should PATENT this idea RIGHT AWAY and you could make a KILLING!!!!!!!!!!!!!<<<<<
It's been done.
abcnews.go.com
digiscents.com
Company Plans to Make the Internet Smell
That aroma you smell may soon be coming from your computer. (ABCNEWS.com)
S A N F R AN C I S C O If you think the Internet is in your face already, you haven?t smelled anything yet.
In a high-tech twist on the old scratch-and-sniff concept, a new company announced plans Wednesday to bring smells to the Internet with scent software and a plug-in device that buffets Web surfers with Smell-O-Vision.
Never mind that Aroma-Rama and its smelly ilk crashed and burned in American movie theaters in the 1950s. In an era when the Internet increasingly dominates the sights and sounds of entertainment, can smell be far behind? Not according to the founders of DigiScents, Inc.
If we can find out the essence of a biological smell and make a profile of that smell, we should be able to digitize it and broadcast it, DigiScents President Dexster Smith told Reuters in an interview.
We really feel we are in the ground floor of a new industry and art form. It is going to span a number of areas, entertainment, e-commerce, advertising and education.
Think this has the slight reek of a hoax about it? Well, guess again. Smith and his partner, Joel Bellenson, are proven high-tech entrepreneurs, having founded Pangea Systems Inc., an industry leader in providing software and technology to biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies.
Their new venture has also earned the ultimate kudos for California?s computer digeratia scratch-and-sniff cover story in the coming issue of Wired magazine.
If this technology takes off, it?s gonna launch the next Web revolution, Wired raved about the new product.
Smell a Snortal on the Web
Smith said the pair got the idea of wiring the Internet for smell during a vacation in Miami?s vibrant South Beach.
We were overwhelmed by the perfumes that people were wearing, all the sensory input, Smith said. We thought: This is a biological phenomenon, this is in our domain. We should be able to understand this and build a company out of it.
They quickly got building and soon the Oakland, California-based DigiScents had the concept down.
First, there is the iSmell, a plug-in computer accessory that will contain a basic palette of scented oils from which a bouquet of different smells can be created.
Functioning like the MP3 players that download music from the Internet, the iSmell will take its orders from DigiScent?s ScentStream software, which will translate online digital cues for different smells into specific orders for the portable perfume factory.
To ensure odor authenticity, DigiScent has created a Scent Registry, a digital index of thousands of scents that the company will license to developers to integrate into games, Web sites, advertisements, movies and music.
To round it out, the company plans to create a Snortal on the Web to give people a chance to sniff for themselves.
There is real science behind all this. Bellenson, who once ran a Stanford University lab specializing in DNA synthesis, has drawn up models for the way odor molecules bind with the some 10 million odor-detecting neurons on a human nose, a step toward establishing the Scent Registry that will underpin the concept.
DigiScent?s founders hope that by licensing their scent spectrum, they will create a world of smells for the Internet generationperfumes you can smell online, computer games with the whiff of the jungle or the tang of jet fuel, movies that give audiences the scents of an autumn bonfire.
The sense of smell is closely tied to memory and emotion, making scent a powerful way to reinforce ideas, Bellenson said. If a picture is worth a thousand words, a scent is worth a thousand pictures.
What About Aroma-Rama
Not that any of this is new, really. The American film industry pioneered olfactory entertainment in the late 1950s with Aroma-Rama and Smell-O-Vision, pumping smells through theater vents or releasing them from beneath audience seats.
In 1981, filmmaker John Waters launched his movie Polyester with a scratch-and-sniff card dubbed Odorama. But American noses remained aloof to the idea that smell could be part of a fun evening out.
Will DigiScents succeed where Smell-O-Vision failed? Smith and Bellenson are confident that Internet users, ever hungry for fresh stimuli, will embrace the iSmell.
One of the big problems with the past has been implementation, Smith said. If you are asking someone to do scratch and sniff, it is not going to be as compelling as if it is automated.
Copyright 1999 Reuters. |
