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Sniff That Web Site

DigiScents prepares cyber scratch-and-sniff enhancements.

James A. Martin, special to PC World

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In the early 1980s, the world's first (and only) Odorama movie, Polyester, set a new standard for mass olfactory stimulation. Audiences received scratch-and-sniff cards, which they used to smell the same scents as the movie's characters were experiencing.

Now a California company, DigiScents, is raising the bar on the concept. The Oakland-based start-up announced this week it has developed an interactive technology designed to add scents to multimedia CD-ROMs and Web sites.

With the DigiScents technology, content developers will be able to add customized scents to enhance the user experience, motivate sales, and more. For instance, a shopper visiting a scent-enhanced cosmetics Web site could sample the newest perfumes; a travel Web site could add the scent of the ocean to promote a Caribbean vacation package; a game player could solve an interactive murder mystery using scented clues. DigiScents' technology includes both software and hardware components.

"The sense of smell is closely tied to memory and emotion, making scent a powerful way to reinforce ideas," says Joel Bellenson, chief executive officer of DigiScents. "If a picture is worth a thousand words, a scent is worth a thousand pictures."

So how do you translate something as ephemeral and evocative as a scent into bits and bytes? A company spokesperson wouldn't outline all the specifics, as the company is currently working with a variety of potential developers, and consumer applications won't be a reality until early 2000.

In general, though, DigiScents has developed a digital index of scents that the company will license to developers to integrate into games, Web sites, ads, movies, and music. The scents will be emitted from a computer peripheral device called the iSmell. The release of the scents is determined by ScentStream, software that drives the operation of the iSmell in coordination with a Web site or other media.

DigiScents is the brainchild of Dexster Smith and Joel Bellenson, who also founded Pangea Systems, a privately held biotech firm.

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