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It was almost a year ago that we were first introduced to the concept of scented packaging for food products, but ever since our first whiff, the idea has really taken off and the idea has hit the mainstream.

Scents are a way of setting a particular product or advertisement apart from the competition, forcing people to take notice before turning to something else. Just look at the bus station ad for the Milk Board, which was an extreme example, but clearly generated a lot of attention. In a crowded marketplace, this type of unavoidable advertising is just what some companies need.

Recent products to jump on the scented ad bandwagon include Kraft Jell-O and White Fudge Chips Ahoy, which got full-page scratch and sniff ads in People Magazine and Diet Pepsi Jazz, which has scented coupons and "store signs infused with the new soft drink's [fragrance]." LG even used chocolate-scents to market their new Chocolate phones, although it probably triggered a chocolate craving before one for mobile phones.

Source

Nicole recently posted about fingerprint scanners used by school cafeterias to ensure that kids are eating healthy meals. Well, some graduate students have now used similar technology to make getting junk food easier. An engineering professor at the University of California San Diego started the "biometric soda machine" project and students in his department have since outfitted a regular snack machine with thumbprint and facial recognition, as well as a bar code scanner, CR80 News reported. The goal of the project, known as SodaVision, is an easy, debit-based system where people can walk up to the machine, be recognized, choose their snack and walk away. A visit to the SodaVision site also has examples of the machine's interface, which looks like a screen from Star Trek.

[Via Pure Pedantry]

Back in January, I got a letter from CHOW Magazine, telling me that they were temporarily stopping the publication of their print edition in order to regroup. In the interim, their website, Chow for Now, put together some good content. Today I got a small card in the mail telling me that (a) CHOW has been acquired by CNET Networks, Inc., the same folks responsible for the recent facelift of Chowhound.com, and (b) that the rest of my subscription to CHOW would be fulfilled by a subscription to Intermezzo, a food, wine, home and travel magazine. I've leafed through a few issues of Intermezzo in the past, but was never compelled enough to actually buy a copy. Sigh. So far, I think the new Chowhound site is great, mainly because of the searchable forums with RSS feeds. I'm assuming that sometime soon a blend of Chow and Chowhound will take shape. Chow.com is still pretty much vacant, aside from a place to leave an email address for launch news. With any luck, the type of content that made CHOW such a great publication will begin show up online.