Wolfram|Alpha what is it and why should you care?
 

Wolfram|Alpha is generating tons of buzz lately. From Readwrite Web:

Instead of searching the web for info, Alpha is built around a vast repository of curated data from public and licensed sources. Alpha then organizes and computes this knowledge with the help of sophisticated Natural Language Processing algorithms. Users can ask Alpha any kind of question, which can be constructed just like a Google search (think: "hurricane bob" or "carbon steel strength").

Where Alpha exceeds, is in the presentation of its "search" results. When asked for how many internet users there are in Europe, for example, Alpha returned not just the total number, but also various plots and data for every country (apparently Vatican City only has 93 Internet users).

Another query with a very sophisticated result was "uncle's uncle's brother's son." Now if you type that into Google, the result will be a useless list of sites that don't even answer this specific question, but Alpha actually returns an interactive genealogic tree with additional information, including data about the 'blood relationship fraction,' for example (3.125% in this case).

If anything, Wolfram's significance is that it brings back CURATED (authority) data sources instead of Informal and organic (and not always accurate) group authored sites like Wikipedia and, in a differing format, Twitter search. The problem with curated sources has always revolved around AVAILABILITY and REACH. Wikipedia and the Internet's mottly collection of self-authored and lifted content solve (imperfectly) this problem. Wolfram does a great job of presenting the data... but can it keep up with the exponential growth of all the search queries out there?

It's a site on a shared hosting account that every time I've tried to load it I get nothing until the site times out.

And trust me i've tried lots

Alpha testing hiccups probably :)

its a page that 404s for me.

pretty clever marketing concept.

I just know that search engine is going to somehow be put into our brain someday and work along with it, can you imagine that. I mean it sounds impossible but so does a cell phone 50 years ago. What if we could just ask ourselves any question an it looks up some online database hooked up to our brain? Then it would be a matter of asking the right questions and following through with the information. The world is ending!!! :winkwink:

I just typed in my fave subject into it

eating alone restaurant

and it spat out "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."... lol

When I type it in google i get hundreds of articles and discussions on message boards about eating alone, tips on eating alone in public, experiences etc

Same as always. What I always get at that site:

seems like a lot og hype to me

Not saying this will be it, but it's the future of search engines in one way or the other. A search engine that actually delivers information and can assemble information together, not just a list of results it found. Google is just a giant index. At some point we will look back on that and laugh how we fooled it by buying a few links.

BTW, for those that don't know, the founder, Stephen Wolfram is not just some joker with some venture capital. He's a mathematical genius with very few peers and specializes in exactly this type of work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram

It's a site that launched 2 days earlier than planned thanks to a headline CNN news story that generated a ton of traffic that they were not anticipating.

You think they've built that much computing power into a site like that and put it on a shared hosting account? Seriously?

Google gives articles and sites, WolframAlpha gives statistical data, research, formulas... you can't ask a mathematician where restaurants are in your neighborhood and expect to get a list of websites.

I have seen the video and its fucking amazing.

Damn site won't load. Why on earth show it off with crappy hosting?

It's a pile of shit.

some ppl here don't get it.. they're on the front page of CNN.com for almost 24 hours now, I bet that'd kill even some load balanced chains...

but i feel you, surely CNN notifies them of impending listings as it reflects badly on them if they're featuring stories on sites that won't load.

nothing to be happy about :)

Looking good

It has quite a bit of code from the Mathematica project.

the site is made by old programmers, do not wait anything fresh or new, just some stupid blah blah and mathematics and shit how it is great ... but it was a big waste of time ... :2 cents:

so you looked at his wikipedia and came up with this conclusion, eh? you're going places.

Nothing spectacular...

no man i never saw wiki i saw some promo movie about it and with all respect to everyone working hard, this was a wasting of time ... but time will tell ...