The Web: you can hear it, you can see it, you can read it, but you can’t
smell it. At least not yet. Netropolitan toured the Net for some useful
olfactory offerings. No one really knows how the nose works. But Tim Jacob, a
physiologist at Cardiff University, describes five theories of smell on his
website, including one to do with molecular vibration. Just follow the smell links from
www.cf.ac.uk/uwcc/momed/jacob to the smell tutorial, where he walks
you from the nasal epithelium to the olfactory bulb.
Wine lovers will find the key to unlocking all those tip-of-the-tongue
descriptions of a wine’s bouquet in the Aroma Wheel, devised by Ann Noble at the
University of California at Davis. Find out how it works and order your own at
http://wineserver.ucdavis.edu/Acnoble/home.html.
The Fragrance Foundation, an umbrella group for the perfume industry,
sponsors a website with perfume links at www.fragrance.org. From there, hop to
the Olfactory Research Fund (www.olfactory.org) to review the latest research in
“aroma-cology”, the study of the link between scent and psychology. Or check out
the perfume bottle photo gallery at www.perfumebottles.org.
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Of course, all of these sites would be much better if only computers had a
smell interface. And research is under way. Search on “olfactory” at the
Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory page (www.emsl.pnl.gov) and you will
find at least a dozen papers devoted to electronic noses. Meanwhile at
www.digiscents.com you’ll find a company developing a personal scent
synthesiser, called iScent, which will allow PC users to play “scent-enabled
media”. If Digiscents is successful, the imaginary scent tools described at
www.rru.com/webodor, including the olfactory transmission protocol (OTP) and
Adobe Odorshop, may be forthcoming. As the site’s creator warns, unless we are
careful, hackers may one day upload our body odour without our consent.
