Posts with tag ScanTeck

Despite the advances of virtual realism in today's technology, our experience of the world in binary is still fairly, well, limited to zeros and ones. Sure, you can create a life-like avatar who can eviscerate its neighbor with disturbing accuracy or learn to dance like Justin Timberlake, but when it comes to the smells of real-life, our computers are very beta.

According to a Business Wire press release from May 2007, an innovative software company in Alabama has developed the technology to change what it is that we smell when we sit down to our computers. ScenTeck Technologies released its Scratch-N-Sniff Pro(TM) downloadable software that allows users to experience aromatherapy through their speakers.

Designed as a way to heighten the sensory experience of the computer, the Scratch-N-Sniff Pro (TM) software combines a proprietary "Scent Card" that responds to sound triggers in your hard drive. Translated in to plain English, the Scratch-N-Sniff Pro sends inaudible waves through your speakers that are translated as scents rather than sounds.

ScenTeck Technologies argues that its digital aromatherapy, which comes in scents like Mountain Breeze, Passion fruit, and Patchouli, enhances productivity. And that sounds, or rather, smells, like a great innovation if you can overlook the oddity of inhaling instead of hearing a sound.

But what do you think? Would you want to smell sounds from your computer or would that be just a little too Meet-the-Jetsons for you?

(Full Disclosure: Uh, if this is a viral marketing campaign and not a real product, consider me duped!)