Our confectionery products like lollipops and jelly beans have always been one of our top selling corporate products for expo's and events.It seems though that their days may be numbered. You see some scientists have been working on a virtual simulator to transmit taste through a computer. In other words other than downloading games, music and videos you soon may be able to download taste.

An engineer with a Phd by the name of Nimesha Ranasinghe from the National University of Singapore has been working on a way to send electrical signals through a device which stimulates your tongue and tricks it into feeling a taste sensation. One of his first experiments? A lollypop. Now these are extremely early stages to this technology and at the moment creating taste requires you to stick a piece of metal attached to some wires into your mouth. Not exactly a must try experience yet, however the technology is truly marvelous. However it does work well apparently. (you can find out more from his website: http://www.nimesha.info/lollipop.html#dtl )

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To get a true taste of something though there are many other factors other than you tongue. Things like ambience, smell and sight are all important. So assuming that you are already looking at a yummy piece of candy and that your room is nicely decorated then the only thing left is smell. I remember some years ago a new company called DigiScents had built a working machine where smells can be transmitted through the internet, unfortunately that company was a little bit ahead of its time back then in 2009 and has since folded. In Tokyo though a team of scientists at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology have been working on a LCD display that can dispense smell. So combining that technology with this taste technology may be something very interesting in the future.

The only thing this cool technology still cannot solve though is this big conundrum. How to make smelling and tasting things on my Ipad possibly cool and from a personal hygiene point of view how on earth can i possibly lick my dirty Ipad screen without getting sick?