Innovation of the week

A plug-in for smartphones called Scentee delivers notifications by scents rather than ringtones.

“How ever did we live without this?” asked Robert Sorokanich in Gizmodo.com. A Japanese company has developed a new plug-in peripheral for smartphones called Scentee, which delivers notifications by scents rather than ringtones. The “smell dongle,” which retails for $35 on the company’s website, plugs into the headphone jack and contains a small scent cartridge containing “enough fragrant liquid for 100 sprays.” Using a smartphone app available for both Android and iOS platforms, users can program the plug-in to deliver “a scented puff on timed intervals, as an alternative to audio notifications.” Odors currently available are rose, lavender, coffee, rosemary, and strawberry. Users can even link certain smells with specific -notifications—with each scent pack available for $5. That means that if you use it with your phone’s alarm clock, you “really can wake up and smell the coffee.”

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