Science Fiction
Dictionary
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
 |
Google AdCense Improves Olfactory Relevancy
Google AdCense is now available in a beta release. AdCense computers look at the advertising content on your site, focus on the keywords used in the text and graphic images and deliver a relevant and vaguely agreeable odor.
The new service is intended to improve the experience of most computer users by providing relevant olfactory content. Typically, the way a computer smells has nothing to do with the content presented on the screen. Studies show that increased relevancy results in more satisfied users and improved pay per click advertising.
Science fiction fans will of course recall the odalarm by Frank Herbert, which wakes you up with an appropriate odor. See also last week's Science Fiction in the News article Frank Herbert's Odalarm - A Scent-Based Alarm Clock.
A Google Challenge was issued in late 2002; a team was formed of the best entrants. After coding diligently for 8 months, non-technical people in focus groups were asked to press their noses to CRTs and LCD flat panels displays and describe their experience. The most common response from participants was "sorta smelled like ozone." Noting that people like fresh scents, developers pressed on. A brief success was made with the smell of peanut butter and jelly, but it appeared to function only on "Bring Your Child to Work" day.
Google insiders reluctantly revealed that initially it was hoped that AdScents could be delivered. However, given the difficulty of delivering identifiable, verifiable odors to every computer without additional hardware, this was abandoned. Also, it was realized that this would be very difficult to internationalize.
Finally, developers made use of a combination of downloaded software utilities that would overclock and even hyperclock a computer's CPU, causing small amounts of magic smoke to escape. This, combined with other odors emitted by heavily taxed hard disk drives (using the same technique once used to get drum hard drives to "walk"), would create a small but usable set of vaguely pleasant odors. Thus, AdCense was born.
Why hasn't this program advanced past the beta stage? Cynics point out that rich media online advertising both delays content download and grotesquely interrupts the user's experience; they stink and there's nothing you can do about it.
Happy April Fool's Day!
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 4/1/2004)
Follow this kind of news @Technovelgy.| Email | RSS | Blog It | Stumble | del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit |
Would
you like to contribute a story tip?
It's easy:
Get the URL of the story, and the related sf author, and add
it here.
Comment/Join discussion ( 1 )
Related News Stories - (" Misc ")
Is There A Subterranean Ocean?
'A vast, limitless expanse of water, the end of a lake if not of an ocean, spread before us, until it was lost in the distance.'- Jules Verne, 1864.
The Robotic Shopping Cart Of The Future
'...the machine would carry his bag in its soft plastic jaws and follow him as faithfully as a well-trained hound.'- John Brunner, 1975.
Arctic Resource Jackpot An Old Wish
By inducing climate change, new resources are revealed.
Marie Curie's Papers Still Radioactive
And the half-life of radium's most common isotope is 1,601 years.
Technovelgy (that's tech-novel-gee!) is devoted to the creative science inventions and ideas of sf authors. Look for the Invention Category that interests you, the Glossary, the Invention Timeline, or see what's New.
Science Fiction
Timeline
1600-1899
1900-1939
1940's 1950's
1960's 1970's
1980's 1990's
2000's 2010's
Current News
Grok And The City Fathers From 'Cities In Flight' By James Blish
'Chris, the City Fathers are not interested in your welfare; I suppose you know that. They're interested in only one thing: the survival of the city.'
Why Not Move A Warehouse District?
'Did you never see a moving house before?'
Will An AI Found A New Religion?
'You must decide how you will worship Me.'
Terraformer Industries Make Methane
'Drake was the young spatial engineer he employed to terraform the little rock...'
I Need An Outdoor Spherical Display
'Usually a spherical display hovered in the centre...'
Worm Disrupts Physics Simulations Undetected For A Decade
'It diverts integers of the data, the fundamental message-units, so that they no longer agree.'
Muxcard Redditor's DIY Credit Card-Sized Computer
It's a computer, but just barely.
'Soft Assembly' Fashions That Fashion Themselves On The Wearer
'Clothes are no longer made from dead fibers of fixed color and texture that can approximate only crudely to the vagrant human figure...'
Orwell's Nightmare Of AI-Written Novels Comes To Pass
'Books were just a commodity that had to be produced, like jam or bootlaces.'
ISS Plagued By Leak - Again!
'There were perhaps a dozen bladder-like objects in the tunnel...'
Ridiculous 'Ghost Murmur' Tech Still Science Fiction
'...it rears and spreads its fan. It can pick one man out of a crowd.'
Outdoor Video Screens Can Be Arbitrarily Large
The Shape of Things To Come
Infrared Contact Lenses To See In The Dark
'I can see in the dark, Case.'
What'll You Have? Extinct Animals Returned, Or Synthetic Eggshells?
'...a new plastic with the characteristics of an avian eggshell.'
Sunbird Pulsar Fusion Like Leinster's Space Tug
'It was a pushpot, which could not possibly be called a jet plane because it could not possibly fly. Only it did.'
RentAHuman App Lets AI Agents Hire Humans
'She wouldn't stop until Antar had told her everything he knew about whatever it was that she was playing with on her screen.'
