First Ever Scent-Based Mobile Messaging Platform, oSnap, Launches

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., June 17, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Vapor Communications, a technology company with offices in Cambridge, MA and Paris, France, is announcing the launch of oSnap, the company's iPhone application that allows users for the first time ever to tag photographs with over 300,000 unique scents. Scent-tagged images, known as oNotes, can be electronically sent and received via email, Facebook, and Twitter in select hotspots that have the oPhone, the hardware that emits the scent. To witness the first visual interpretation, check out the video on www.onotes.com and on YouTube.

Now available for free download in the Apple App store, oSnap gives users the ability to snap a photograph and tag any object in the photograph with scent compositions. Creation of the scents is facilitated by a scrolling window that presents up to 32 unique scents of which users can choose from one to eight, resulting in over 300,000 combinations. Users are then able to name the scent-tagged image and send it electronically to friends. Upon receiving an oNote, users can tap the oNote icon and be directed to onotes.com, where they will see the image and associated scents. If users possess an iPhone in Bluetooth proximity to an oPhone, they will be able to download their aromatic message and smell the scents.

"oPhone introduces a new kind of sensory experience into mobile messaging – a form of communication that until now has remained consigned to our immediate local experience of the world," said David Edwards, founder and CEO of Vapor Communications. "With the oPhone, people will be able to share with anyone, anywhere, not just words, images, and sounds, but sensory experience itself."  

Now through July 31 via an Indiegogo campaign, the first commercial oPhones are available for pre-sale to be produced and delivered in early 2015 for a retail price of $149 (a 25% discount on ultimate sale price of the oPhone of $199). A menu of perks and added features with the oPhone are also available and described on the Indiegogo site, including the ability to sign up for an oSnap Foodie Adventure, where people learn through original foodie experiences how to best capture aromatic content via oSnap and share with friends. The group member with the most downloaded oNotes at the local hotspot over the Indiegogo launch campaign wins a free oPhone.

Within the next few months in select hotspots around the world, users will be able to download their oNotes onto the oPhone in freely-accessible public settings. The first hotspots will be located in Paris, France, New York City, and Cambridge, Massachusetts with more to come. Eventually users will be able to share and experience oNotes anywhere with their personal oPhone.

Today, The American Museum of Natural History, home of the first oPhone hotspot in the USA, hosted Edwards, a renowned inventor, for the first transatlantic scent transmission.  The American Museum of Natural History will open its oPhone hotspot to the general public for three weekends in July. 

The company's first scent vocabulary focuses on food experiences. Over the coming months, oSnap functionality will expand to provide other scent vocabularies and additional aromatic experiences. For example, the company's "coffee bliss" vocabulary, to be tested over the several weeks of the Indiegogo campaign via in-store experiences with coffee consumers at Coutume cafés in Paris, will become available to the general public on oSnap over the next months.

"Aroma has a special meaning for coffee connoisseurs," said Tom Clark, co-founder of Coutume, a prestigious specialty coffee roaster based in Paris. "We are excited to integrate oNotes into our cafés and online communication, starting here in Paris, to help our consumers better select, understand, and appreciate great coffee."

The scent-based messaging platform onotes.com is led by Harvard University & Wyss Institute Professor and inventor David Edwards, with co-inventor and former Harvard University student, Rachel Field. David Edwards founded and runs Le Laboratoire in central Paris, a cultural innovation center, where art and design experiments at frontiers of science lead to breakthrough innovations and cultural works.

For more information, follow oPhone and oNotes on the following social media platforms:

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ScentMessaging 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/scentmessaging 
Instagram: @ScentMessaging
Tumblr: http://scentmessaging.tumblr.com/ 
Pinterest http://www.pinterest.com/ophone2014/

About Vapor Communications Vapor Communications was founded in September 2013 by David Edwards with his students Rachel Field and Amy Yin, the designers Baptiste Viala and Laurent Milon of Studio Millimetre, and the creative team at Le Laboratoire in Paris.  The Company intends to bring scent messaging to mobile phone users wherever aroma matters, for health and memory, self-expression and entertainment, travel and the marketing of aromatic content online. The Company will partner with leading corporations to diversify the range of aroma delivery systems and bring scent-based messaging to users and industries around the world.  

About David Edwards David Edwards is Harvard Professor of Idea Translation in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Wyss Institute Faculty Member, founder of Le Laboratoire Paris, and Le Laboratoire Cambridge, and the inventor of food and sensorial innovations, including WikiFoods, and drug and vaccine technologies related to the delivery of drugs and vaccines to the lungs to eliminate injections.  He is a member of the National Academies of Engineering in USA and France, a member of the National Academy of Inventors (USA), and a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres of the French Ministry of Culture. He is the author of many articles, patents, and books of fiction and nonfiction.

Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140617/118765 

SOURCE Vapor Communications