Wolfram Alpha – computational knowledge engine

| brunocm, on May 5th, 2009

Just a quick note since I hear Mr. Wolfram has started promoting Wolfram Alpha (May 2009), his new ’search engine’, through seminars/webinars in NYC.  One colleague has seen 2 presentations over the Web – it seems the overhead display where the show-and-tell was was either not-in-frame or blurry and illegible.  Hmm…

He calls it a ‘computational knowledge engine’ and by what I’ve read and examples I’ve seen it should take things in the search space’ to the next level.

Imagine asking some HTML page ‘What was the ratio of GDP for the US vs Japan for the last 20 years’ and getting back a trended chart (downloadable with data table too?) :: May 29 no downloadable data but pointers to the data sources which I need to review further.

One colleague was recounting one example, where the engine was able to tell you which brother, given 2 first names, was older based on historical trends (probabilities) in name trends (in the U.S.)

Here is an unreviewed list of links for ‘wolfram alpha’ on @delicious.