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Online Aromatherapy in Japan
prostoalex writes "USA Today has an article on Japanese telecom company delivering fragrances via the Internet. NTT Communications will send a combination of 36 scents through a crystal ball, which can be attached to a PC."
This remindes me of iSmell, a vapor ware (pardon the pun) from the dot com era. It'll be cool if they actually get it to work but the complexity of "making" scents leaves me wondering. The difficultly in mixing components for a visual response, paint for example, is hard enough. I'm just not sure it can be done, well that is, for the olphactory systems.
I am invisble, and you can't see me.
I wonder how long it takes before the thing runs out of smell and needs smell recharge cartridges. It's not the smell printer that costs money you know, its the smell recharge cartridges.
"'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."
A scent deliverer is one thing, but a "scent scanner" would be interesting too.
A device that could record in digital form what an environment smelt like, then it could be reproduced at a later time by something like the crystal ball thing in this article.
The scent deliverer might have to get some more depth. Maybe it could be the next big evolution of output devices... For instance, visual displays (monitors) evolved from 1-bit (monochrome), to 8-bit (256 colors), then 16-bit (thousands of colors), up to the useful 24-bit (millions of colors).
An olfactory delivery device could evolve from something like this crystal ball which might be at 4-bit (thirty something smells) at the moment, up to 16-bit (thousands of smells) in the near future.
Build them into webcams, then geekettes would not only feel oblighed to wear makeup, they'd have to put on their perfume too! And geeks would have to shower more frequently...
Love me.
Thought so. And that's why they went bankrupt.
Well, you know, I read the article and I was all, like, wow and stuff. Like, I can get smells beamed to me through the internet, and I was all, like, "Oh my gawd". So I called Suzie, 'n stuff. And she's a Pisces, and she loves the smell of lavender. So she was all like the Price is Right and stuff.
But I still can't for the life of me figure out why you'd want it. The article makes it sound like it's always gonna spit out the same fragrance for all people with the same sign. You don't need an internet connection if there's only 12 friggin' buttons needed. Hell, TCP has more states than 12 if I recall. What next
And if you think printer cartriges are expensive
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I've read somewhere though that the nose has only ~20 different types of molecular receptors, and if you can control the stimulation of each type of receptor, then you can recreate any kind of scent (like the RGB of the eyes).
Anyone watch the Futurama episode entitled A Big Piece of Garbage?
In it, the Professor uses his invention, the Smelloscope, to locate a huge meteor composed of garbage (produced by New New York and launched into space because the landfills were full) that threatens to destroy the planet (spoofing the movie, Armageddon). This leads to quotes like these:
Fry: Hey, as long as you don't make me smell Uranus. (laughs)
Leela: I don't get it.
Professor: I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all.
Fry: Oh. What's it called now?
Professor: Urectum. Here, let me locate it for you.
Fry: Hehe, no, no, I think I'll just smell around a bit over here.
Ahh... Futurama, it was ahead of its time.
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