I've been playing around with a new search engine "computational knowledge engine" from British author/physicist Stephen Wolfram called Wolfram|Alpha and I'm not sure where I stand on it just yet. The trick with W|A is that you have to keep in mind that it's not a search engine. It is not going to give you results like Google, so don't even try to compare them.
Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.Wolfram|Alpha uses Mathematica, a software piece that smart guys like scientists and engineers go ga-ga over. I think of it as a giant textbook or a giant brain that knows lots of math. And the math part is key, because Wolfram|Alpha doesn't seem to be as strong in other fields, such as pop culture or history, as it is in the sciences. But W|A is still in its early stages and has said that they are working to add more source information for topics such as cars, sports and food. So what do you think? Some of the comments I've seen in the Internet World are all over the place, some praising it, other condemning it. You can plug complex equations into it to get some pretty powerful results (just try "integrate (x^2)*sin(x)" and see what you get), but when I type in "British Columbia," Wolfram|Alpha FAIL. Will I use it? I'm not sure. I think I can get the results I need from Google and Wikipedia, but like the fact that there's a strong scientific background. Play around with it and let me know what you think of Wolfram|Alpha. Is it the next big thing?
