Applied aromatics

By H.G.

TECH types are falling over themselves to make devices that stimulate users' senses. Unless those senses are taste and smell, that is. Now a three-year-old Japanese company called ChatPerf has offered something with a whiff of the old idea of "smellivision" about it.

Scentee, as the smartphone gizmo is named, is a small, round, sleek white object that plugs into the phone's audio-jack. It can be set to emit a particular aroma from a list that includes things like corn soup or cinnamon bun, when you receive a text message or e-mail, to greet you in the morning as the alarm goes off, or when someone "likes" your Facebook post. (You cannot as yet control the smell that accompanies the message someone receives from you.)

The device uses a smell cartridge that lasts for about 100 sprays, which can be swapped at any time. When Scentee’s app get’s triggered by an alert, it will prompt the device to release an aroma accompanied by a coloured light. Scentee is, in other words, an alert system that has replaced sound with smell.

ChatPerf has received nearly 20,000 times since Scentee's launch in early October. Koki Tsubouchi, its boss, is planning to roll out the product in America soon.

Americans will, however, are likely to miss out on another app that the company sells in Japan. Hana Yakiniku (which translates into "nose BBQ") wafts savoury smells like beef ribs so that you can “taste with your nose”. It is aimed at dieters and poor college students. Given the preponderance in America of overweight and obese individuals—which, at 64.5% is more than three times Japan's—the company may be missing a trick.

For the moment, then, Scentee looks a bit like a glorified air-freshener. But ChatPerf is sniffing around for ways to improve its mobile smell technology. It has already begun to create a version of it that can hold more than one scent and can be worn and activated by your phone wirelessly. It also wants to introduce game applications, so that players can, say, sniff gunpowder as they shoot. Smellivision it isn't. But it is a start.