Releasing odors in movie theaters to enhance the viewing experience is an idea that’s been around for decades now. Now NTT Communications, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Japan’s telecommunications behemoth NTT, takes the idea to another level: The company today announced the development of a “fragrance communication” system that makes it possible to send smells over the web.
NTT Communications is currently recruiting monitors for their so-called i-Aroma service, which will go through a test run from mid-July to the end of August. i-Aroma is based on a USB device (15cm tall) that contains six base oils, which are mixed and vaporized depending on the online commands the diffuser receives. As a result, a number of different fragrances will waft from the machine.
A total of 360 lucky participants will be able to try out two different “fragrance communication” services for free. The first service [JP], jointly developed with a professional astrologist, makes the i-Aroma device emit odors that match the dominant planets at a given time of the day. The second service [JP] makes sure you smell fragrances (designed by an “aroma therapist”) matching your lifestyle, which means you get different nasal stimuli in the morning and during the evening, for example. NTT Communications even set up closed social networks tailor-made for their i-Aroma users.
NTT as a whole isn’t joking around as far as the development of aroma-emitting devices is concerned. NTT Communications last year pilot-tested a mobile fragrance communication system. Last year, NTT Communications successfully launched a fragrance-emitting digital signage system for stores. And there is even more stuff based on the concept of “fragrance communication”.
Mainly targeting single women in their 30s, the company currently tries to find ways to commercialize i-Aroma, too. At this point, only users living in Japan and owning Windows XP or Vista PCs can sign up for the trials.
Smell-o-vision. It’s smell-o-vision! Very amusing, and not unusual that it was being publicly tested first from Japan. Gah – PLEASE don’t put it on cell phones! No one wants that to be hooked into any of the apps that immediate spring to mind.
LOL… how long before every hacker starts inserting fart or crap smells into pages? Even worse, what if you hate the smell and people end up hating your site? Smells are extremely personal and people have widely different tastes.
This whole thing is a TERRIBLE idea.
Your absolutely right Steve. LOL!!!!!!!!
I agree with you !!!
What about multiple signals from different websites?
It can be mess for people with allergies..
IFart + IPhone + I-Aroma = “Real men of genius!”
Does this smell like a bubble? During the last one DigiScents raised something like $20,000,000 to do the same thing…
UFB
It’ll be a real pleasure surfing Rotten.com with this device plugged in.
It would be interesting to see how porn sites will exploit this technology. We could have a modern-day version of the infamous Scratch-&-Sniff concept. Just point the arrow to a certain body part (on a porn site), shake the arrow, and a “scent” would be emitted.
How about certain sites constantly emitting a certain scent? Just as Starbucks.com would emit tantalizing aroma of coffee, so too, Vagina.com would emit the sultry aroma of a vagina.
What would a deoderant site smell like? The armpit or the deoderant that goes on the armpit?
WTF
Never mind him his dose of “miracle juice” is just starting to kick in.
What would porn sites smell like: the smell of the perfume the porn star wears or the smell of the body part that a close-up pic has been taken of?
Does anyone remember iSmell? I saw a demo at Comdex about a decade ago. IIRC the logo included a skunk. #fail
E
#FAIL
I’ll wait for the i-Aroma S….first there was texting, then sexting, now smelting.
The way this is described makes me think this company was based on whatever IP DigiScents had left over after they went tits-up.
next thing we need are ads on the sides of pages that release smells too
This concept was written about in Wired 10 years ago: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/digiscent.html
2001:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell
Deliciously weird and wonderful.