‘iSmell’ a turkey

The scent of baking turkey is one of the things that make Thanksgiving such a great holiday (that, and the after-dinner nap). But while my sense of smell adds to the holiday experience, how does it factor into what I do at work? Luckily, my co-workers all pay adequate attention to personal hygiene, so it really doesn’t. Smell, like the phase of the moon, is something that’s rarely uppermost in my mind.

So I can’t help but wonder what DigiScents thinks it’s doing. This startup had one of the more popular booths at Comdex this month. It hopes to find the sweet smell of success in bringing odor to your PC, an endeavor it dubs aromagenomics (one of the more horrible neologisms I’ve heard lately).

The company wants to sell you a speaker-sized computer peripheral device called iSmell, which you attach to a serial or USB port on the computer and plug into a standard electrical outlet. The iSmell emits chemicals designed to duplicate some original scent, just as computer speakers do with sound.

If you’re not already pursing your lips and holding your nose, stay with me a bit longer. First off, why do we need remote scent? Can you think of any product or service for which scent is the prime purchasing criterion — other than specific scent-related products, such as perfume? I can think of a lot of products that are unnecessarily scent-enabled, such as laundry detergent and bathroom tissue. And now we’ll be able to add odor to our e-mail?

Second, I don’t have faith in the technology. We know how to digitize images and sound, but we’re nowhere close to being able to digitize smell. You may want to take a chance on purchasing perfume based on what iSmell sends you to sample, but I won’t trust it until I can do a side-by-side comparison. Imagine how skewed a color photo appears when printed on an ink-jet printer whose red cartridge is running out. Now think how a similar problem would play out in scent.

But my carping isn’t going to stop anyone from proceeding, nor should it. I’ll just wait, with open mind and nostrils, and try the product when it’s released next year. Still, I can’t help dreading the advertising campaigns, with close-ups of human noses and moist sniffing noises trying to convey a sense of smell across media not designed to accommodate it.

I’ll be spending time Thursday giving thanks that no one has yet tried to market taste and flavor electronically. No way am I going to lick my monitor!

categories Articles | Administrator | datetime Monday, November 20, 2000 12:00 pm | comments Comments (0)

Phone pas

Recently, eWEEK’s Carmen Nobel reported that “the proliferation of expensive, gadgety phones … which few users want … is stressing manufacturers and may ultimately retard wireless communications development.”

How’s that again? Evil manufacturers are thrusting features upon innocent users, then complaining that being forced to innovate is holding them back?

Excuse me if I lack sympathy. You see, I’m one of those few users who want all those features. I want a mobile phone that doubles as a two-way alphanumeric pager and lets me snag information off the Internet. I want to be able to synchronize the address book on my computer with a phone number directory on the phone. If I could use my mobile phone as a remote control for my TV, I’d probably be in heaven.

The one thing I don’t want to do much with my mobile phone is talk on it. I resisted carrying a mobile phone for years, until my wife upgraded hers and I inherited the castoff. I tend to use it only in an emergency. I feel silly and self-conscious pulling out my phone and chatting away in public places instead of retreating to the safe environs of a phone booth. Still, I want to have that option available.

I do want e-mail access wherever I am. When I travel, I use a Motorola PageWriter two-way alphanumeric pager to keep in touch. It feeds me headline news, sports scores and stock quotes — almost like having a little Internet terminal in your pocket.

Speaking of which, there’s always the pocket PDA. I’ve just gotten a Palm VII to play with. I’m pretty impressed so far. Maybe my ultimate device is coming by the end of the year in the form of Handspring’s Visor Phone, which gives GSM voice support to a Palm OS hardware platform and doubles as a (slow) wireless modem. The only catch is the price — $299 is way too much to pay.

So maybe the answer is to simplify after all. I’ll carry around a simple mobile phone with a basic rate plan. But give me an ultraportable PC with a color screen and wireless Internet access with an unlimited download plan. Ah, bliss!

categories Articles | Administrator | datetime Tuesday, November 7, 2000 12:00 pm | comments Comments (0)

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