smells
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Sniffy Market will let you smell products as you shop
If you've ever wanted your retail shopping experience to include more smells, well... get excited about Sniffy. It's a prototype product meant for stores that want to let their customers smell their products as well as see or touch them. The obvious examples are food and drink retailers, where customers might want to get a whiff of spices or coffee. Perfume is another obvious example, but I'm struggling to come up with other situations in which this makes sense.
Sensorwake clock wants to wake you up with scents, not sound
One of the most hated sounds in the world has to be the shrill siren of the alarm clock in the morning. But what if you could wake up to a pleasant scent instead? That's the thought behind the Sensorwake, which is a unique olfactory alarm clock. Insert one of six scent cartridges (ocean, lush jungle, croissant, coffee, chocolate or peppermint) in the slot, program in your wake time and you'll be awakened with the aroma of your choice.
Smell-O-Vision on your smartphone: Scentee sends smells instead of texts (video)
The dubious ability to send odors to your pals just became a distinct possibility thanks to the Scentee app and hardware from a company called ChatPerf. Seen in Japan, it works by letting you load a liquid refill into the device, which is then mixed and dispersed into the air at the command of an included app. The company noted a few of the myriad possible uses, like sending a smell to a friend who also has the device, perking up a yoga session, helping you wake up or making a shoot 'em up video game more lively with the odor of, say, gunpowder. It's still a prototype, but the company hopes to bring it to market with a variety of different odors, and launch it for iPhone or Android devices. Meanwhile, you can sniff it out in the video after the break.
Rockefeller University scientists figure out how to see smells
We already knew that select scientists were working up an advanced electronic nose, but now a team at Rockefeller University has apparently figured out a way to actually see smells. Supposedly, these gurus closely investigated fly larvae and found that sensing odors "in stereo" enabled flies to navigate to smells much more effectively than when only one olfactory organ was used. As they studied said phenomenon, the researchers used a "novel spectroscopic technique that exploited infrared light to create environments where they could see, control and precisely quantify the distribution of these smells." Impressive though this may be, we still prefer the ole GPS method to locating our favorite fare, but beholding those delightful aromas could certainly help out in a pinch.[Via Physorg, image courtesy of Noendo]
