The Internet is coming to its senses. A handful of start-up companies are developing scent technology that will let you click and sniff your computer.
The prospects are intriguing: background smells for Web sites, shopping sites that let you smell a perfume before you buy it, even computer games that let you smell the bad guy coming around the corner.
Odors could be encoded in everything from advertising to e-mailed greeting cards. Why spend all that money on roses or chocolates on Valentine’s Day when you could send the smell of them for almost nothing?
The possibilities are endless, even if their viability remains uncertain.
Sniffing out these possibilities are companies such as Savannah, Ga.-based TriSenx, a company that is not only developing scent technology, but also claims to be the only one developing taste technology.
Another company, DigiScents Inc., is developing a product appropriately dubbed iSmell that attaches scents to e-mail, Web pages and interactive video games. Still another company, AromaJet.com, is working with kiosk owners to add a sensory component to retailing.
In general, the technology works like this: Odors are encoded as digital data. A serial cable transports that data to a printerlike device about the size of a shoe. Inside the device is a cartridge containing scented oils or water-based chemicals. The cartridge processes the scent just like a color cartridge in a printer reproduces a photograph. A tiny fan poofs the aroma directly at the computer user’s face.
TriSenx insists the technology will greatly enhance e-commerce and that scent soon will become as routine as audio on the Internet.
Some analysts disagree.
“Sure it’s fun, but I don’t see scent as being central to a person’s online experience,” said Jackie Fenn, an analyst at Gartner Group. “I still think it will be seen more as a gimmick than as a core asset of the Internet.”
Other analysts argue that a society in which many consumers are irked by perfume ads in magazines isn’t likely to want scents emanating from their computers.
But if and when it does catch on, the implications for retailers could be staggering.
“Often people will buy clothes or toys online, but they’re hesitant to buy food, perfume and other items online,” said Kathey Porter, marketing director for TriSenx. “It would help you make a decision about whether to buy these kinds of products if you could smell them first.”
TriSenx was launched in 1999, the brainchild of entrepreneur Ellwood Ivey, who came up with the idea for adding scent to the Internet after stumbling upon a picture of a chocolate cake while surfing the Web. Certainly it looked luscious. Now, he mused, if he could only smell or even taste it. Ivey became convinced that online smell could be the next big thing.
“Right now this technology’s a novelty item, but it won’t be long before people get used to it and come to rely upon it,” Porter said.
It also won’t be long before consumers are able to get their own olfactory perspective.
By the end of the year, TriSenx’s scent-producing hardware is expected to go on sale for about $49.95. Consumers will be able to download the software for free.
Next on the company’s agenda: taste technology, which it hopes to start marketing next year. It would allow users to apply flavors to a thin potato-based wafer that would be absorbed in their mouths.
Meanwhile, TriSenx faces some stiff competition from Oakland, Calif.-based DigiScents Inc., which is working on a box called iSmell that reads a digital file from a Web site, then creates a smell from a “palette” of chemicals stored in a cartridge.
Most analysts point to the company, founded in February 1999, as the industry’s leader. And indeed the company has amassed a laundry list of impressive partners, including Procter & Gamble.
Founder Dexster Smith enthusiastically described iSmell’s potential as if he’d just discovered the answer to global warming.
“Smell is a powerful force,” he said. “It evokes emotions and memories.”
With iSmell, he said games could be scented so that you actually smell a gun being fired, a car being crashed, or an enemy approaching you in the forest. Even Pokemons could have individual smells. And smells could be used as a foreshadowing device in a movie, similar to the way music is used now.
“When the desktop-publishing thing happened, it gave the average person control over graphics,” Smith said. “Now we’re giving people control over smell.”
Smith expects DigiScents to release iSmell next year. The device is likely to cost at least $80, although a final price won’t be announced for another 60 to 90 days.
Inspired by the aroma of the ocean while vacationing on a Miami beach, Smith launched DigiScents along with Joel Bellenson. The pair had earlier started a biotech company called DoubleTwist that develops human-genome databases. DigiScents is relying on some of this same technology to uncover the core chemicals making up the array of discernible scents.
DigiScents says it has patents pending on more than 100 olfactory receptor genes, with an eye toward creating a base of 128 primary chemicals that could be combined in various proportions — similar to the way an artist might mix hues of paint — to create an almost endless supply of smells.
Users could click on a mouse to elicit a smell corresponding to an image on their computer screen, such as the icon of a flower in a virtual garden. Or they could passively receive a smell encoded in, say, a restaurant’s Web site.
“Not only will scent technology be important to retailers, but it will become a core of the entertainment industry,” Smith said.
