Or any other scent you care for, if Olly gets off the ground. The small white smell generator is currently just a Kickstarter project, but if it finds enough funds, it could add another, more fragrant facet to your social-networking world.
[imgclear] The Olly is designed to take any sort of perfume or oil you might have and emit it at pre-programmed times. Out of the box, it will respond after a certain number of @mentions on Twitter.
So, if you’re popular, or a profound tweeter, then this guy’s probably going to be working overtime to keep up with you. It’s good then, I suppose, it’s designed to be stackable, so you can have all sorts of odours firing out at you — a constant, airbourne reminder of just how great you are at fitting awesome into 140 characters.
The inspiration for Olly came from a research team within Mint Digital, the London-based company responsible for the project. They’re going off the notion that scents are linked to the formation of feelings and memories — I guess the idea is that by bringing tweets and smells together, you’ll better remember your online experiences.
Mint Digital plans to license Olly’s code as Creative Commons, as well as devise an API, so inquisitive programmers can link the box to any sort of activity, be it Twitter or even something offline. It currently has just over $US7000 of the US$35000 required, so if you’re keen to snort your Twitter mentions, head on over to the page and make your pledge.
[Kickstarter, thanks Hugh]