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Smell Mail to Replace E-mail?
Christianfreak, one of the two people not to submit a new lawsuit today, writes "My boss pointed me to a website describing a new technology that will allow people to add scent to their web pages or email. The site claims they use Java and a better understanding of the human genome to create scents through a device called the "iSmell"." These folks appear to be serious. The mind boggles. Will people start complaining about overuse of the <STINK> tag? All right, a slashdot contest: name some internet experience (including URL if appropriate), and the smell that should accompany it. Funniest entry gets a slashdot t-shirt.
Update: 01/23 10:20 by michael : Okay, I've selected a winner. An honorable mention goes to comment 26, the perfect amount of shock value. But unfortunately, not funny enough to take the shirt. However, the comments following it are extremely funny. :)
But the first comment to make me laugh out loud was this one, with pirated smelz and snifz. Maybe I've just been reading too much about the RIAA and mp3's lately... Congratulations to the user known as Tim Behrendsen.
The obvious one ->
Any porno site,
and the smell of...
Apple lost their "look and feel" in Apple v. Microsoft.
What part of "Gestalt" don't you understand?
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
Called the 'iSmell'?
There's a website that needs some deodorant.
Transmeta.com -- it smells nice, but you just can't put your finger on what it is.
Freebsd.org -- sulfur? brimstone?
Microsoft.com -- sulfur? brimstone?
www.tux.org -- It's, cool, crisp, and... someone burped. Herring? What?
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pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
Don't worry. It HAS to be the product of some judicious Photoshop work.
At least, I hope so...
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
I meant " when you submit a first
post, the submission page releases
a smell of a rotten tomato."
Wiping the rotten tomato off my face,
Apuleius.
grits are sort of like a corn porridge.
pretty good, actually.
"The things we wizards have to put up with."--Jethro Bodine
first of all, the throngs of hipsters embracing the net will take advantage of the new "NetNoses," thus paving the way for such wastes of bandwidth as "grandmaskitchen.com" (popular with the Martha Stewart types) and "dormhamper.org" (a live netnose of an actual CS student's overflowing laundry pile!). These will be easily dismissed as fads, at least until the e-commerce community catches on.
Florists will soon get a foothold in the web world. No longer do guys have to send actual flowers to their would-be's -- rose scent and an appropriate JPEG will do. Personal fragrance companies can also take advantage of this new technology, not to mention aromatherapy and incense merchants.
Then the integrated netcasts will begin: can't make it out to the club tonight? don't worry -- we'll have a light show, phat beats, and the smells of drugged and drunk teenagers mingling with those of copious narcotics and artificial fog for you all set at liverave.com! just sit back and inhale the party!
David Bowie will make the news again at the opening of the world's first online opium den. The world will then see a major loss of productivity that makes the advent of multiplayer gaming seem like a minor distraction.
and, speaking of multiplayer, this area holds the greatest potential. tired of those damned campers? smoke 'em out with an appropriately placed round from your Fungal Sweat Sock Launcher! want to lure your enemies to the killing field? try the aluring aroma of tasty homemade apple pie! or, even better -- the BFG of the olfactory -- the smell of an actual woman!
that's right. the future is ripe with potential in the field of internet smells. get in on the ground floor before the RIAA, Microsoft, and major movie studios step in and figure out how to ruin all our fun!
Burnt silicon smell and www.hardocp.com.
:)
Sorry to raid on your little scent parade, but as far as I know, scents can't be patented/copyrighted...this is how all the knockoff companies stay in business.
"A great deal of intelligence can be invested in ignorance when the need for illusion is deep." --Saul Belloe
Whenever the thought of doing something like this has crossed my mind, the worry about synthesizing toxic chemicals always comes flooding into my head soon after. If you have a programmer error on a webpage, nobody can see your webpage. If you have a programmer error in this hardware, it might end up killing people. Perhaps I am just too paranoid, but this seems like a problem for any general enough implementation of this idea.
Oh what I wouldn't give for some deodorant to fix my code with...
A Government Is a Body of People, Usually Notably Ungoverned
iSmell was covered in Wired sometime in the middle of 1999, I believe, and it was very interesting!
Basically... and I'm doing this from memory....
The receptors in your nose that pick up smell can be broken into a finite number of 'base' receptors (lots, tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, I forget). Each molecule that triggers a smell sets of different combinations of these, as different edges of the molecule bind to different receptors. Now... what iSmell figured out (or at least makes use of), well, instead of finding the actual individual proteins that bind to these receptors, and figuring out exactly what each one should be... they just look to nature and by trial-and-error, found *similar* shaped ones, and then tried some more, and came up with a device that contains many tiny 'wells' of different 'base scents'. They can then combine these in different combinations to produce different smells.
From the Wired article, it sounded very promising.
It's not a hoax, and they have demonstrated prototypes already. It was in a Wired magazine last year (was the cover story even... )
Umm.. actually, we have a *VERY* good idea of what the components of smell are. The iSmell *WORKS*, and is based on very sound science.
Yes, it has to do with shapes of molecules, and the various receptors those molecules trigger... and if you can produce molecules that trigger single receptors, they can be combined to produce any odor imaginable.
And iSmell has *already* dont his and it works.
You forgot to close your second tag.
My browser/smeller is now causing all text in the rest of the page to smell according to the "fruit:apple:rotten" class, and your last sentence smells of rotten apples with a generous helping of runny fresh dog turd heaped on.
For those Slashdotters whose browser does not automatically close SMELL tags, I'll fix this as a service to the community:
</SMELL></SMELL>
Now i have to smell farts.com too! Hearing it is enough, but to smell it? That leaves a whole new catagory for them to use.
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"...silence is a dangerous sound."
At any recycling website, that horrible smell that comes from recyled plastic. That is the absolute worst smell that comes from anything that people choose to handle.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
http://www.transmeta.com/ -- I could smell you, but then I'd have to kill you
http://www.hemp-sisters.com/ -- Let's just say it's a pretty strong smell.
http://www.house.gov/ -- the smell that comes out the back of a bull, covered by a strong perfumed masking smell
http://www.microsoft.com/ -- anxious sweat, money, the smell that comes out the back of a bull, the smell of a deisel engine (you know, like the ones that power steamrollers and bulldozers)...
http://www.getyoursoftware.com/ -- spiced ham
http://www.loc.gov/ -- very musty
http://www.as400.ibm.com/ -- very musty
http://www.slashdot.org/ -- jolt cola, fried silicon, solder, sweat, ozone...
http://www.doodoo.com/ - the site that smells like crap
http://www.slashdot.org - smells like woodstock, a bunch of people enjoying the show, sometimes rowdy. usually smells funky due to the amount of people who spend so much time milling around for the entire thing.
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-
ping -f 255.255.255.255 # if only
As if the ones we thought were real, like cleaners and soap and engine coolant, weren't bad enough. I can only imagine what these things are going to do to me. The fact that they mention the human genome isn't particularly comforting, either.
``Money has no odor.'' This is a famous remark, first made by the Roman emperor Cesar Vespasian to his son Titus: Vespasian had invented a tax on urin (probably meaning, on the use of public toilets in Rome), and Titus complained that this was somehow ``unclean'' money. So Vespasian took a handful of sesterces, put it under Titus' nose and asked him: ``what do you smell?''. ``Nothing'', answered Titus. ``Exactly,'' replied Vespasian, ``money has no odor.''
Its the reutnr of the classic SmellUSmellMe server! Live chat, and scents! My dog would LOVE it.
(On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog.)
... iSmell is, of course, the SDK on which Prof. Farnsworth's Smelloscope is based.
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www.freshmeat.net .....
... with the obvious potted-pork smell.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
The lab notes from experiment two are especially descriptive of the smells that rotting tomato, rotting SPAM, rotting (amazing!) Twinkies, and rotting Jello Jigglers can emit, but could certainly benefit well from smell tags. Also in those same lab notes is a horrific rendition of how the rotten tomato perpetrated violence upon the hapless twinkie as it lay there peacefully on the plate (the twinkie didn't rot until the tomato killed it... alas.)
A quote from the site:
How does Spam decompose compared to other organic materials?
View the daily decay. Each day is fuzzier, grittier, slimier, and smellier than before.
Visit often.
The experiments sadly stopped a couple of years back, but the page has remained for posterity. Perhaps my post here will spark the interests of other budding scientists to continue their research. In my opinion, having the actual smells of the experiments would increase the overall assault on one's senses quite nicely.
LouZiffer
LouZiffer
Spam. Think about it.
That evil site should smell like gunpowder and raw hamster guts..... either that or stinky cheese.
What happens when someopne gets the idea of using a nerve gas smell, a whole new level of cyber terrorism?
--Nuintari
slashdot : where an opinion can be wrong.
... because I didn't read every single article. But I didn't see it in the 100 or more that I scanned, so here goes.
If you're masochistic enough to read comments here with your threshold set at 0, then a fair number of messages should be accompanied by the wonderful smell of...
Hot grits!
(one of my favorite breakfasts, by the way. I like mine in a bowl, not down my pants)
- Mike
Aibo: Real life dog smell, complete with sniff-butt action and lovely allergic reactions.
SmellingSalts.com: when that picture at http://www.goatse.cx/ (may not be suitable for some viewers) has knocked you out.
Lynard Skynard's web site: Oh, oh, that smell.
Redmeat.com: Pretty pugnatious pestillance.
Crocodile Hunter's site: "I'll stick my thumb, up his butthole, here you to, sniff it!"
New York's site: "Wow, I'm glad I got this iSmell, I can smell all the great things of New York, all from the convienence of my home. Honey, do I smell a dead guy? Is that urine? Wow, someone's peed on him! Isn't technology wonderful?"
Linux.com: A cool, antartic, refreshing smell.
and last, and least:
any John Water's film site: When Smell-O-Vision (first distributed with a Water's film [which I can't remember the title of] in the form of scratch and sniff} has just gone too far. A definate exercise in bad taste.
bye
Dan
Not to mention that the smell of coins also reminds me of those stupid Microsoft NT client licenses-- constantly getting nickled and dimed to death!
;-)
--LP
Don't cringe too hard, your face might get stuck.
Whenever I deal with them, I feel like I'm getting nickled and dimed to death.
--LP
I'm not sure which is funnier, a real attempt to do this or this parody (which incidently has been around for years by now).
Trees can't go dancing
So do them a big favor
Pretend dancing stinks!
and that burned-blood stench when you frag someone ....
Well, all I can say is.. I smell arrogance, the double lattes of the marketdroids, old money, and those wonderful sweater things Mr. Gates wears..
:-)
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
It's a fairly bogus idea (in both senses, if you'll pardon the expression).
We're able to encode (and therefore to transmit and reconstruct) visual images digitally because we understand the relevant paramaters of digital images: intensity vs. two spatial dimensions and wavelength. Sound is even easier: intensity vs. time. It's even easier for these because to a reasonable approximation, these parametres are linear.
But we have NO idea of what the relevant parameters of a smell are. People have suggested all kinds of ideas over the years, but nothing has been really satisfactory. You've probably heard about the seven primary scents; that's pretty much a load of garbage, debunked by people who studied olfaction in the fifties and sixties. More recently, people have tried to understand the sense of smell in terms of the shapes of the molecules being detected, but even that has been unsatisfactory.
Perfumers, therefore, remain essentially what they were two hundred years ago: empiricists surrounded by a LOT of bottles. Hundreds of them. It's amazing to see. It takes YEARS to train someone to be good at it, and even then, their ability to reproduce an arbitrary odor is VERY limited. The notion that someone could put that in a box and sell it to people is absurd.
What you're much more likely to get is an odor equivalent of Jelly Belly jelly beans. You know how on the jelly beans, they say, "Combine cinnamon and popcorn to get the flavor of cinnammon popcorn balls"? Well, they'll choose a handful of cheap, fake scents, and use those over and over again. So you'll get things like "flowers" and "fruit" or even "fruity flowers", but never "the beach in Tahiti after a rainstorm".
Do YOU think people will pay for that?
Happy Premise #3: Even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won't.
...the smell of fear!
--
Matt Singerman
Matt Singerman
http://matt.vegan.net/
Imagine it: You're playing that new first person adventure game and the following occurs...
>look
This filthy bathroom belies the existence of disinfectant. A single toilet and sink are the only fixtures. More breathable air can be found to the southwest.
You can see a stool here.
You can't wait another second. Fortunately, you've stumbled upon a bathroom. A moment later, you are feeling much better, although your thigh muscles are still quivering a tad.
Now that the "crisis" has passed, you notice a strong and familiar odor pervading the room.
>smell
[Scratch 'n' sniff spot number 1. Hit the RETURN/ENTER key to continue.]
You trace the smell to a dubious slice of pizza, crumpled in the corner. [Incidentally, we had some pretty putrid scents available, all of which would've seemed right at home in a filthy restroom. In the end, we were too kind to use them -- but we were sorely tempted!]
but as far as I know, scents can't be patented/copyrighted...
Ah, that's what they said to Apple when they filed their "look and feel" lawsuits. Ralph just has to file the equivalent "whiff and stink" lawsuit!
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Sulfur, of course - probably the most appropriate use would be
during those "This Program Has Performed an Illegal Operation and Has Shut Down" crashes.
And we'd all know what The Onion would be like...
But the best would be Segfault, with Pall Mall Menthol - nobody would know if the smell mail app was working or not!
http://www.DotComGuy.com
Smell: much like localhost, but couple of months older.
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
Buddhanet.net. How about the smell of teen spirit? Help all of those buddhists attain Nirvana.
Pax Digitalia
Smell of Fear
:)
that's quite obvious, right ?
Ob. contest entry: For all e-commerce sites anywhere, I hereby nominate the sickly artificial chemical smell of new packaging. You know the one, like new car smell but bad. Sometimes really bad. Varies by package.
"Moderation is good, in theory."
-Larry Wall
There is no K5 cabal.
I am not the real rusty.
Oh darn, I was going to suggest a great smell for the U.S. Patent Office, but it looks like all of the really good eSmells have already got patents pending.
Brought to you by Frobozz Magic Penguin Fodder.
www.wizards.com: Wizards of the Coast.
I want to visit their website and get the smell of freshly opened Magic cards.
(I haven't actually played in several years, but I hear from my friends that the smell isn't what it used to be -- they've changed inks or something on the cards. On a related note, has anyone opened a Red Hat 6.1 box? That's the same as the "Magic Card Smell.")
-Chris
Haddock, Salmon, Pike, Bass, Cod, Tuna
I knew this kid named Jimmy when I was growing up. Jimmy was, how shold I put it... "Special". Jimmy loved to eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. That's why I think pb & j is the appropriate smell for these guys
Nervous sweat is the smell for these guys and these guys too
For these guys it's obvious, rocket fuel.
And in the same spirit, that vomitey, greasy, sugarey, metallic smell you find near big rollercoasters for them
And the muddy, porcine smell you'd find around that prize-winning heiffer that just keeps eating and getting bigger for these freaks. Of course you know that animal is the main ingredient for the spiced ham smell that you'd find here
If this isn't another of those elaborate hoaxes - then it'd be quite intriguing. Already much work has gone into scent generation (perfumes) and scent detection (bomb sniffers ... heh ... and other industrial uses, of course).
... many different combinations of aromatics could produce the right smell. However, you'd need lots of chemicals - it might just end up a right STINK ...
;) This has implications, also stated on their website, in evoking emotions and memories - very, very powerful marketing tool. Fresh Lemon, Sweet Flowers, the smell of the Sea - jsut imagine, not only do you have to watch L d'caprio for 3 hours, you also have to smell him ...
Digital scent generation? From my understanding of smell, it might just work
Smell is a more powerful sensation than taste - why does your food taste bland when you have a blocked nose?
heh.
but i digress, it's high time we looked into other forms of media, not just sight and sound. This might not be "it", but it's a step in the right direction, imo.
.my 2p
Anyway, I think a better scent for MS's web page would be ethyl mercaptan. CH3-CH2SH, patently artificial, listed in the Guinness Book as being among the foulest odors known to humans. Penetrating and lasts a long time, too--skunks use mercaptans in their personal defense musk.
[0] Yep, I'm one of them.
[1] Sorry--couldn't resist.
Give a monkey a brain and he'll swear he's the center of the universe.
You know that smell you get when you've been handling lots of money? Dipping your hands in those jars full of coins, sorting, counting them out?
That's what I smell when I visit Microsoft's websites. Makes me want to wash my hands, every time...
--LP
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Want to reply? Don't know HTML? No problem.
No Zen is good zen
Every corporate website would employ the olfactory equivalent of Muzak -- some superficial focus grouped scent of productivity and profit, mixed with some twinge of dynamism and excitement. Evil h4x0rs would break in and replace these smell files with the smell of pot (doubt that? Check the attrition hacked-sites archive and count the pot references).
We would receive spam offering us the usual "free pics delivered daily to your email box," augmented with "wee wiff of quim in the morning" offerings no discriminating connosieur (sp) could resist. [Rob Roy reference]
Mailbombs would become messier affairs.
Valentine's day (easy). cron jobs that produce the smell of toast and coffee (or other apropriate cues) at the right times of day.
Rather than spraying an aerosol about whilst cleaning a bathroom, you'd send mail to the e-toilet.
I pity those who got their moderator points on this one. :)
http://www.apple.com/imac
f ree.html
Smell: Tangerine, Blueberry, Grape, Lime, or Strawberry. Take your pick.
http://127.0.0.1
Smell: Me. Eww?
http://www.microsoft.com
Smell: Decaying, rotting meat - as found near most large predatory creatures.
http://www.amiga.com/
Smell: None at all!
http://www.wto.org/
Smell: Is that... Tear gas?
http://www.windows2000test.com
Smell: A very large foot, immersed in a very large mouth.
http://www.be.com/press/pressreleases/00-01-18_
Smell: The persperation of desperation.
http://www.starwars.com
Smell: A big pile of cash.
http://www.linuxone.net
Smell: Vaguely rodent-like?
http://www.apple.com
Smell: A (somewhat spritely) reanimated corpse.
http://www.microsoft.com/windows2000/
Smell: I can't tell, I'm still holding my nose. You figure it out.
http://www.digiscents.com
Smell: Vaporware (do you _really_ think this will take off?).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- VelociNews (http://www.velocinews.com)
- Jeff
Further analysis will be provided upon request, assuming, of course, that there's a nice cabernet available to accompany the lively discussion.
SmellU-SmellMe: Don't get caught chatting without it.
-B
Ash and Hickory, straight-grained and true, make excellent bludgeons, dandy for the cudgeling of vegetarians.
"Something smells fishy about all this..."
"Here's Bill Gate's email address and the raw sewage tag!"
"Just imagine the potential for pr0n sites!"
"Given the typical hacker's regard for personal hygiene, how useful could it be?"
"We just hacked MS's home page, and it doesn't just stink figuratively anymore!"
I've heard rumors that God is considering a lawsuit against the creators of this technology. The basis of his case is that the encryption method used in DNA was reverse engineered and anyone using this is illegally encoding and decoding smells. Also, the potential application to copy smells and distribute them without licensing a biological nose from God could seriously cut into His profits. I wouldn't be too worried though, from what I here no good lawyers have ever come remotely close to Heaven, so he has more or less horrid legal council.
~CalibanDNS
First someone creates an open source Ralph Lauren Polo... I would just hold my face up to my computer, hit the button, and BAM! Ready to go out on a date!
Then, of course, Ralph Lauren files a lawsuit against the web sites distributing the Polo source code. "If everyone can distribute Polo for free, then there will be no in-scent-ive to create new fragrances!" The judge issues a restraining order and bans any code that duplicates copyrighted smells.
Meanwhile, the "smelz" underground grows like wildfire, and the industry is helpless to stop it. A version of Napster appears to trade pirated "snifz".
It's only a matter of time. Don't forget you saw it here first.
---
<SMELL class="flower:rose" strength="%75">This idea has potential</SMELL><SMELL class="fruit:apple:rotten" strength="%80">I like to see inovation on the net.<SMELL class="turd:dog:fresh:runny" strength="%100">But it does have some drawbacks.</SMELL>
Don't worry about this new standard too much... I've just telnetted to 2002.future.timetravel.int and called lynx 4.0 to see what some sites have done.
Seems some people are really using cascading smell sheets, but Microsoft already "invented" a replacement "standard", Microsoft DirectActiveSmell(tm) 2002.
Here's some HTML from the future microsoft:
<IF what=BROWSER type=MOZILLA>
<SMELL class="shit" strength="%100">
We always told you your browser was shit!!!!!
Go get Microsoft Internet Exploiter NT 2002 Plus NOW.
Only $499!
</SMELL>
</IF>
<IF what=BROWSER type=EXPLORER>
<ACTIVESMELL SRC="stp://smell.microsoft.gov/goodsmell.zip" PRICE="$20">
Welcome to Microsoft.gov
</ACTIVESMELL>
Good news:
<ACTIVESMELL SRC="stp://smell.microsoft.gov/rottenapple.zip" PRICE="FREE_TRIAL" TRIALPERIOD="20MIN">
We finally managed to kill another of our competitors - Apple is now rotten!
</ACTIVESMELL>
[...]
</IF>
Seems M$ isn't the only user of this technology though.
Here's a part of slashdot 2002:
Red Hat Linux 10.0 has been released. Big news in this release are Kernel 5.2, X12R1, GNOME 3.0, KDE 4.2, and the possibility to read Windows 2001's FAT33 filesystem. The full source can be downloaded from ftp100.redhat.com.
User comments:
<H2>First post!</H2>
First post! After 13 years of waiting for this chance!
<H2>First post using HTML tags!</H2>
<B>First!!! <COLORIZE COLOR="random">I RULE</COLORIZE></B>
<H2>First post with a smell</H2>
<SMELL class="meat:spam">First post with smell!</SMELL>
Oh, and let's not forget about LinuxTwo (successor to LinuxOne):
<SMELL SRC="http://www.redhat.com/linuxsmell.tar.gz">
<IMG SRC="http://www.debian.org/linux.jpg">
We are NOT just copying stuff from others!!!
This message is provided under the terms outlined at http://www.bero.org/terms.html
Imagine, an international smuggling ring completely destroyed, eliminating a large fraction of organized crime on the entire planet, by one simple idea: .
// zyqqh