Friday 15 May 2009

Introduction to WolframAlpha search engine

Launching soon is WolframAlpha, a search engine which is doing what Ask Jeeves tried to do in the late 90s - answer questions, sort of.



Get a good understanding of how it works with this introduction screencast.

Unlike last year's launches of Cuil and Wikia Search i'm far more excited about WolframAlpha as they are focusing on a part of search that isn't currently serviced sufficiently. The more factual infosheet side rather than a method of redirection to other websites (which is what Google does).

For me, it could take over from Wikipedia for provision of immediate-response factual based information (i'm not suggesting it will usurp Wikipedia, just for those times i need straight facts).

Queries such as, "What's the GDP of Germany?" or "Where is the ISS at?". Neither questions i ask as often as i type in "BBC football" into Google mind.

Relevant web links
Web tool 'as important as Google' - BBC News

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