Looks good, smells better

The idea of aroma-emitting televi-sion sets is being extended to Websites by Ricoh of Japan, which wants to equip both television sets and computers with devices that would eject smells that will go with the programme or website that the user might have chosen. Ricoh says Web pages could carry data or puls-es which trigger a mechanical device inside the computer or television to crush capsules of certain aromatic agents - and odour masking agents, so that one smell does not mix with the next. For instance, a site on forestry should smell of trees ...surf to an oceanographer's site and you will get the whiff of salt water. Passionate e-mails, of course, could release posh perfumes.