PC Software and hardware invented by computer scientists at the University of Glasgow let users follow their noses when sorting through their digital photos. Their Olfoto system tags images with the scent of your choosing-freshly cut grass, chocolate or manure are examples given by the New Scientist-to create an olfactory classification system. Since most of us take pictures to preserve memory, it makes sense (awful pun potential acknowledged but avoided here) to integrate them with the most intimate sense.

Computing is rarely limited by chemistry. Smell-and-sort works slower than conventional computer classification regimes to begin with, the inventors acknowledge. The biological interface brings the hardest problems in chemistry into a straightforward computing problem, organizing information. How do you synthesize economical odors to use with the software? Perhaps more interesting would be to tag photos with synthesized phermones of individuals in the photographs to see how we react to them on an unconscious level. Philosophically, it's worth pondering how in the future we might blend shape-and-size analog technology (the nose) with digital storage.

Thank goodness, someone has found another dimension in which PC's stink.