Is Google afraid of the big, bad Wolfram?
Conrad Walters
May 18, 2009
HOW long would it take an auctioneer to speak 6000 words? What was the weather in Beijing on the day Kevin Rudd was born? How many Americans are named Andrew?
Google and Wikipedia flounder with such questions, but an ambitious new search engine called Wolfram Alpha has the tech world abuzz with the promise of being able to do more than link to countless web pages or canvass a broad topic.
Named after its creator, British physicist and mathematician Stephen Wolfram, the free site went public over the weekend and officially launches tonight amid high expectations.
What separates it from everything else is an ability to interpret complex questions in everyday language and then answer those questions by consulting disparate pieces of information.
For example, Google can identify the nearest place for pizza; Wolfram Alpha is designed to tell you where to get the best pizza, explains Sydney technology author and futurist Mark Pesce.
While it may be some time before wolframalpha.com tackles culinary debates, the example does reflect the site's ability to interpret data from unrelated sources.
"It's going to have enough natural language guts to be able to look at a whole bunch of articles and judge them," Mr Pesce said.
The fledgling site is heavily biased towards the sciences, but its ability to infer conclusions from its data is where the potential lies.
For the record, Wolfram Alpha's answers to the questions posed above are: 24 minutes; 21 degrees and clear skies; and 1.06 million Americans.
Conrad Walters
May 18, 2009
HOW long would it take an auctioneer to speak 6000 words? What was the weather in Beijing on the day Kevin Rudd was born? How many Americans are named Andrew?
Google and Wikipedia flounder with such questions, but an ambitious new search engine called Wolfram Alpha has the tech world abuzz with the promise of being able to do more than link to countless web pages or canvass a broad topic.
Named after its creator, British physicist and mathematician Stephen Wolfram, the free site went public over the weekend and officially launches tonight amid high expectations.
What separates it from everything else is an ability to interpret complex questions in everyday language and then answer those questions by consulting disparate pieces of information.
For example, Google can identify the nearest place for pizza; Wolfram Alpha is designed to tell you where to get the best pizza, explains Sydney technology author and futurist Mark Pesce.
While it may be some time before wolframalpha.com tackles culinary debates, the example does reflect the site's ability to interpret data from unrelated sources.
"It's going to have enough natural language guts to be able to look at a whole bunch of articles and judge them," Mr Pesce said.
The fledgling site is heavily biased towards the sciences, but its ability to infer conclusions from its data is where the potential lies.
For the record, Wolfram Alpha's answers to the questions posed above are: 24 minutes; 21 degrees and clear skies; and 1.06 million Americans.
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