Stinkernet

IT'S the latest piece of technology to be developed for your PC and Sun online readers are about to get an exclusive pre-phew.

Boffins in deepest Essex have invented a new bit of software that turns the Internet into the Stinkernet.

Using your computer speakers, you can now experience smells as well as sounds while you're surfing in cyberspace.

Imagine doing your weekly shop at the online supermarket and getting a whiff of those gorgeous fresh loaves in the bakery aisle.

Or checking out the perfect picnic hotspot for over Easter weekend and sniffing the scent of the newly-mown grass.

It's an interactive version of scratch and sniff technology that generates an aroma, which has already been encapsulated within a thin layer of gelatine or plastic spheres on paper or card.

When this is rubbed off, you rupture some of these spheres and release the smell.

Simple eh!

Well, now the clever scientists have adapted it to work on your home computer with special panels that can be scratched with your mouse.