Wolfram Alpha: A computational knowledge engine

Posted on 21. May, 2009 by Bradley Hebdon in Reviews

Wolfram, the potential game changing computational knowledge engine, (not a search engine) recently went live.  Why isn’t Wolfram a search engine? Well that’s because it takes your query and creates content from it, by outputting graphs, maps, tables, and information that you may not have directly requested.  Wolfram relies on knowledge from official sources to do this.

To better understand how this works, here’s a simple example. If you entered “New England Patriots” as a query, you would be returned the following sets of information:
1) AFC Season Standings for current season
2) Year-by-Year breakdown of wins, stats, etc.

In this case, the data was pulled in from sources such as NFL, ESPN, CBS, Stats Inc, etc, etc.

wolfram1

"New England Patriots" output

Here’s another example. If you entered “New York” as your query, you would be returned the following:
1) Population totals
2) A map with co-ordinates
3) Current local time
4) Current and historical weather

"New York" output

"New York" output

Visit Wolfram and try it out. I’m very curious to know what your impressions are. Is this useful? Is this for the average user or rather specific kinds of users? Would you use this on a daily basis, or only in specific situations? Is this a threat to Google or Wikipedia?

Is Wolfram hot, or not?

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