Noses are actually alarmingly complicated organs, and are also very poorly studied compared to other sensory organs. Progress on electronic noses has been slow to date, and existing devices tend to be fragile and expensive.
The Syft (1) Mass Spectrometer - the Voice 200 (2) - can sniff air and determine minute amounts of compounds present in real time, sending the output in standard form to a computer. It's the size of a big washing machine, and a lot heavier, and is portable only in vans.
One application is food and flavour detection.(3) Others are sea container contamination testing (a very real problem - 20% of so are toxic when opened), ambient air testing for pollutants, medical breath testing and so on.
Noses and how we detect fragrances is actually done on an atomic level, basically by testing the reverberation of the bonds between molecules. So when two things smell the same they actually have the same bond strength, but can be completely different chemically. This is why creating artificial scents is so hit or miss.
Day? The entire week is shot to hell from everyone talking about the lame crap, created by boring marketing departments, at boring companies, that absolutely have to do something "funny".
I think the only good thing to come out of this week is that because I'll insulate myself off from the wider internet so much, I'll actually get a lot done.
Look, once upon a time you would see a few april fool's jokes, and they'd be funny, and you'd laugh, and good times were had.
These days, everysinglecompany absolutely has to send out a "press release" or "product announcement" or "feature enhancement" or other crap, and all of them have been designed by boring marketing departments at boring companies, and vetted to be as non-offensive and boring as possible, and still, people discuss them and send the links around.
Ok. This is poorly made this time :( ... Last year (or a year before that) the double mouse thing was still a bit believable. Anyone with a little knowledge of computer devices would come to know this is a joke.
What I like about this April fools gag is that someone actually built a (admittedly unviable) business around digital scent technology about 13 years ago. It also happened to have the worst name for a product I have ever, ever seen. iSmell.
out of all the things Google have done this year, I would think a competition for which the prize is to give them $1500 would be much more appropriate for April fools... oh wait
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[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 135 ms ] threadhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_nose
(1): http://www.syft.com (2): http://www.syft.com/products (3): http://www.syft.com/solutions/food-and-flavor-analysis
(disclosure - I have a very small investment in the company)
The science and discovery of all this is really fascinating, I recommend The Secret of Scent by Turin: http://www.amazon.com/Secret-Scent-Adventures-Perfume-Scienc...
Lets see what this popular date turned into yet another corporate marketing bs has to offer this year.
Something only a 5 year old would find funny.
I found it funny. Shoot me.
These days, every single company absolutely has to send out a "press release" or "product announcement" or "feature enhancement" or other crap, and all of them have been designed by boring marketing departments at boring companies, and vetted to be as non-offensive and boring as possible, and still, people discuss them and send the links around.
Moderation. It's a virtue.
"You're only using 50% of your hands!"
that's the i'm a teapot protocol...
It's just going to get shut down anyway.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISmell
[1] http://www.theverge.com/2013/3/31/4166884/japanese-smelling-...