Wolfram Alpha 05/18/2009
 

Let me preface this post with a quick bio of Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the potentially revolutionary system I'm about to discuss:

"Stephen Wolfram (born 29 August 1959 in London) is a British physicist, mathematician and businessman, known for his work in theoretical particle physics, cosmology, cellular automata, complexity theory, and computer algebra." Wikipedia

He was a child prodigy who wrote his first article on particle physics at 16 and received his ph.D from California Institute of Technology at 20. Throughout his career he has built a revered reputation both as an academic and as a businessman, developing and marketing a ground breaking piece of software called Mathematica which solved complex mathematical, scientific and engineering problems. It's fair to say that he's a genius and a bit of a geek celebrity.

When a man of this calibre and intelligence decides he's going to put his mind to a new internet search engine called Wolfram Alpha, the tech world rightly takes notice. This isn't search in the classic sense (Google, etc.) instead he's attempting to build a system that indexes and attempts to understand the webs data in a way that allows it to provide intelligent answers to user requests. For example, it can pretty much solve any mathematical problem you input, it can tell you the current location of the International Space Station and it can tell you how many calories are in an average slice of cheddar cheese. No need to browse through a set of search results, Wolfram Alpha simply answers the question and in an insightful way . See this screencast and be prepared to be blown away.

Now for those not familiar with web jargon. the term 'Alpha' is kind of like saying that it's a pre-production prototype. However, having tested it for the past couple of days I have to say, it's looking mighty impressive and the good news is that it's going to get even better. There's still several subject areas where it falls a little short but these will be rectified in time.  I would recommend watching the screencast above to get an idea of the type of requests that the system is currently hot on.

If you haven't heard of Wolfram Alpha already, remember where you heard it first. This going to be huge!

Visit the site here: Wolfram Alpha
 


Comments




Leave a Reply