I’m not usually one for writing about technology, but I’ve just been on the newly-launched Wolfram|Alpha, and I thought I’d just make a quick post. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be writing about how it works (because I don’t have a clue).
For those not sure what it is, it’s a little bit like a search engine. Only it isn’t. The difference is that rather than offering you a list of suggested websites to visit for the information you require (like Google), the site does all the leg-work for you and simply answers your question on the results page.
I actually quite like it. It has trouble with some of the more general questions (at the minute it’s more for scientific/numeric/geographic searches, though it can offer some biographic information as well), and as far as I can see it doesn’t really like full-English requests. Rather, it seems to prefer you to shorten it a little. For instance, I asked it for information on my birthday. So my question was:
To which it replied:
Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.
Though it does seem to work with:
I’m not entirely sure this is going to be a Google-killer. It’d take much more than what it offers at the minute. But if it does catch on (and can increase the amount of information it offers up), it may well give Wikipedia a run for its money.
EDIT:
Interestingly, try asking it the following question:
How many roads must a man walk down before you can call him a man?
