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May 18, 2009 03:49 PM | 7
The Wolfram|Alpha Web site went live today, accompanied by a lot of noise and mixed reviews.
Most of the hoopla came from people wondering whether the new site, launched by former particle physicist Stephen Wolfram and his eponymous company, will give Google a run for its money.
Only time will tell. But Wolfram|Alpha and Google aim to do such different things that the services may ultimately prove to be complementary. Everybody knows Google, but once it was just the little search engine that could. Enter Wolfram|Alpha, touted as a "computational knowledge engine" that searches its own extensive database in an attempt to answer a user's question. Think of it as Ask Jeeves with PhD.
Some reviews hailed Wolfram|Alpha as a breakthrough for the semantic Web because the site responds to queries written in sentences rather than keywords. "It's going to be a challenger in important places where Google is presently blind," The Guardian's Charles Arthur wrote today on the site's technology blog. More succinctly, Wolfram|Alpha's goal aims to give people direct answers to queries rather than send them to other sites where they may find what they are seeking, the BBC reported today on its Web site.
But the new site's use of semantic queries can draw blanks, if the system can't understand what's being asked. We tried the query, "Is Wolfram|Alpha any good?" The answer: "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input," its standard response when stumped. Google, on the other hand, sent us to an intriguing item on Twine: "Wolfram|Alpha is Coming—and It Could be as Important as Google (But It's Completely Different)"
InformationWeek magazine's Michael Hickins noted in a blog post yesterday that the new site is more comfortable answering questions about the International Space Station than obscure baseball trivia. Associated Press reporter Brian Bergstein called Wolfram|Alpha a niche Web site for scientists and technologists, saying "there aren't many ways everyday Web users would benefit from using it over other resources."
Wolfram, the man, urged patience with his newest creation. "What we are being able to release to the world now is something that is clearly only the beginning of a long process of kind of encoding the world's knowledge in computable form," he said in a video interview on the BBC Web site.
Image of Stephen Wolfram © Megan Bearder / Wolfram|Alpha LLC
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7 Comments
Add CommentSimply put, it will be revolutionary. Any comparison to Google is for headlines and the populous, but this will change how we find and compute data, no question. From some basic "playing around" with Wolfram|Alpha I could do things that I've wondered for years why Google (or others) couldn't do.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisFrom first experiences, Wolfram Alpha seems capable of providing insightful answers... but only if you ask the right questions! This is pretty reminiscent of the web 10 years ago where there was a clear mismatch between the questions being asked and the information being regurgitated. But the fact that we've moved towards a far more productive web bodes well for Alpha - my money is on an increasingly sophisticated understanding of what to ask converging with an increasingly powerful engine for providing relevant answers over the next months/years.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOf course, there will always be those who ask questions that the system struggles with, not matter how sophisticated it gets!
http://2020science.org/2009/05/16/wolfram-alpha-should-have-called-it-deep-thought/
Wolfram Alpha is not and will not be a Google killer -- it's simply a different beast. It's a growing knowledge base with a solid analytics/query capabilities and it's already quite good at what it does -- again, not at what Google does. If it keeps momentum and gets better it can become a major well known resource once the hype is over. As for asking it shrewd questions try "What are you?" and others described here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://connectionsblog.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/hello-human-a-dialog-with-wolfram-alpha/
Well, it had no idea what to do with my question about the number of monkeys in China, but if you ask about the number of people in China you get some nice graphs and such.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOn the one hand, it seems like folly. It's quicker and more effective to search for sq. ft. surface area earth, than have to write it all out in complete questions until the software understands you. On the other hand, if the software learns phrasing and intent based on a multitude of being asked questions and then what people are clicking on when given options... this could be huge, moving forward in human-computer interaction.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishttp://www.nobodycaresaboutyourstupidblog.com/whodoyouthinkyouareanyway0204.html
They say truth is stranger than fiction, but when fiction comes true...well that is another story.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhen I finished my thriller, DARK END OF THE SPECTRUM (DEOS), two years ago I never imagined that some of it would come true!
With the reported release of the Wolfram/Alpha search engine a significant plot element of DEOS will come true.
The imaginary chip/program in my novel runs spiders all over the Internet recording and logging the location of specific information. When you ask the chip a question it locates the relevant information and uses algorithms to produce the most correct answer. Only this imaginary chip becomes sentient as it gains more knowledge and within two weeks of its launch has the IQ of a teenager in the novel.
Doesn't that sound similar to how the Wolfram/Alpha search engine works?
Check it out. Download a free copy of the book at http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/aspolicastro
The computer world grows once again! Unfortunately the American Middle Class has fallen away in uneducated ignorance and poverty, stolen from the intellectual circle by madcap advertising propagandists and dishonest junk marketing practices by Microsoft and their ilk, the games-players and such! Perhaps the larger English speaking Asian population will enjoy and ameliorate this region of human endeavor, and stretch it out to an even greater capacity! Thank you for this great effort to bring to the proletariat, through the internet, mental stimulation and a chance to better themselves with knowledge otherwise unattainable. In the smaller Global village, we need less fire-power, more intelligence and fewer hot heads, and the retraction of the aggressor in the world is reflected in the demise of American prowess, dollar wise and in a military sense! May the oil of the world go to those with the most schooling, not those with the biggest armies! Congratulations, China, on your recent victory in Iran, the purchase of the South Azadegan Oil fields, the largest oil find in the Middle East in the last thirty years, was a coup for world peace! Shutting Israel's warmongering mouth forever, illustrating to America that threatening postures are not rewarded with oil, and opening the way to plutonium and its Chinese delivery systems to the Middle East, and a balanced Nuclear threat of "Mutual Destruction" there. Your Intelligence is well respected, and does not go unnoticed! Please contribute to the internet, as the Americans fall away, broke and in despair, and reconnoiter, reassess, consolidate, as they will, and come back to the table, educated and respectable this time, but broke, as you have so deemed for them! The internet , and the Wolfram/Alpha will still need a venue!
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