From the Discovery Channel website:

Jan. 12, 2008 — Japanese are taking their noses global with a Web site that describes different odors around the world and pinpoints where they can be found on a map.

Launched in December, the “Nioi-bu,” or Smell Club, has registered more than 160 scents around the world, ranging from “steam coming out of a rice cooker” to “used socks in the summer,” and pinpointed their locations on a Google map.

Nearly 200 members, called “smellists,” have joined the Japanese-language only site, said Kayo Matsubara, spokeswoman of its operator, KAYAC Inc.
[…]
“All that is missing on the web is a smelling function,” Matsubara said. “That’s our next challenge.”

Forget the flying cars, if technology gets to the point where we can start smelling eastern Japanese “cats with halitosis”, then we’ll know we’ve finally reached the future.