How Should Digital Smell Hardware Systems Be Configured Into Personal Tech Devices?

Whenever a new system is introduced our ever expanding world of personal technology, it takes a while for the industry to adapt, and from there once acceptance occurs, that is if it occurs, things begin to fall in place. Now then, one new technology moving fast across the horizon and has now been caught on the personal technology companies' radar is digitized scent, whereby chemicals are sequenced to create various smells so that a computer gamer, movie watcher, or multi-media eBook reader can smell the difference. And yes, you are probably thinking there are a lot of commercial advertising and marketing Applications for this technology, indeed, I'd agree with you on that.

Not long ago, a fellow think tanker type, Troy LaClaire and I were discussing how such a smell dispenser unit ought to work, and how that hardware ought to interface with various systems, so that the user can get maximum value out of this hot new innovation. Troy suggests that it must work with the games, videos, movies, etc, in a similar way for instance, and the user could partake in the use of it in a way that made the most sense to what they were already used too, for instance;

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1. Primary play unit, which would hold the "misters" for the smells, the motion capture technology (Microsoft Kinect or similar technology would work here), and audio capture.

2. Buyer would then buy the "movie" they want, which would have the removable "smell cartridges", perhaps each unit would have the enough for 3 or so plays?

This makes sense right, yes, okay but we need "standardization" so one-smell system works with ALL technologies; iPhone, Kinect, Cable HBO and DirecTV, etc.

The way Troy envisions this working is that; the main player units would follow current standards/future standards, the only thing that would really be 'proprietary' would be the smell cartridges themselves and how exactly they connect to the main player. The software in the main units could actually be partially open sourced to allow other companies to build their devices to be able to connect to it.

Now then, I would say whoever invents this technology needs to make all the partners they can right away and locked down the industry, otherwise it will be just like the challenge with Beta and VHS. So, we agreed that; a special peripheral port could connect to this third-party device to the main unit. Then the 3rd party device would send signals based on what you have open sourced to allow for it to communicate with your unit.

This would indeed solve all the problems and is perhaps a perfect way to do it. Troy suggests then the company making this hardware system; could also then license the technology itself to 3rd parties (MS, APPLE, DirectTV, and so on) allowing them to build it into their devices directly and the buyer would take the "movie" [or game] home with them, plug it into their "player" and then play the movie, which makes it viable for movie, game rentals, but everything would eventually go virtually, thus, put those new business models out of business within a year or two.

Of course, neither of us have anything against; things going virtual, if you will, and thus, making the unit so it can hook to the internet. Make it so the units can stream Netflix, and let Netflix have to deal with the hassles of dealing with customers for movies. And perhaps then, the real money maker in this particular case, for the company which brings it to market would be the smell cartridges, as these are finite resources, that will have to be refilled. This is similar to the printer industry, in that some of the cheaper printers are sold at a loss, but the manufacture makes their real profit from the ink/toner cartridges.

Also Troy envisions that the user would get a "smell cartridge" that doesn't work, they have to plug in the unit to the internet (or use a flash card) to update the unit, so it would work. Unfortunately, I noted that the challenges with hackers, smelling up your living room by messing with the scent cartridge? But maybe not Troy says because your cartridges (with the encased smell chemicals) would be in a negative pressure system and require this to function properly, similar to how some in cartridges are, and you make it much harder for the end user to refill.

And to keep out the hackers Troy has also worked out a plan, you see; as long as you use a different algorithm each year, you make it harder for "jail breakers" to crack the unit. Especially since most "hacks" involve hacking the unit itself, but in this case if the unit and the cartridge codes do not match then you could not use it. Most companies focus on trying to completely stop the "jail breakers" while in Troy's theory of things he would want to focus on not making it worth their time/energy to jail break the units. Indeed, that's one theory, and I guess it depends on what the Application is.

As you might recall recently Microsoft Kinect's team allowed software writers to come in and hack (jail break their system) and write new software allowing the gaming platform to do much more than it could before. Thus, another thought would be to hire the user community, hackers, and software programs to design more apps for it using a free-market motif, similar to what Apple has done to create so many Apps. Indeed, I hope you will please consider all this and think on it.

How Should Digital Smell Hardware Systems Be Configured Into Personal Tech Devices?