Wolfram Alpha

[Canmorite]

This is one hell of a project, it's like Google on steroids. The site was just launched, check it out!

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Wolfram Alpha will not only give a straight answer to questions such as "how high is Mount Everest?", but it will also produce a neat page of related information – all properly sourced – such as geographical location and nearby towns, and other mountains, complete with graphs and charts.

The real innovation, however, is in its ability to work things out "on the fly", according to its British inventor, Dr Stephen Wolfram. If you ask it to compare the height of Mount Everest to the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, it will tell you. Or ask what the weather was like in London on the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, it will cross-check and provide the answer. Ask it about D sharp major, it will play the scale. Type in "10 flips for four heads" and it will guess that you need to know the probability of coin-tossing. If you want to know when the next solar eclipse over Chicago is, or the exact current location of the International Space Station, it can work it out.

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-st...r-1678109.html

[BerserkerCatSplat]

I've been looking forward to the launch for a while, I think it's a fantastic idea.

[A790]

Sounds cool, but does it actually work?

EDIT: The site isn't working for me.

[nonlinear]

yea, was reading about this a few weeks ago. it sounds awesome, but i've heard conflicting reports about how well it works. gonna check it out now.

EDIT: first thing i tried told me 'we don't know what to do with that," and the second thing said "we have reached maximum test load." seems like they have some bugs to work ouit yet.

[googe]

yeah, doesnt live up to the hype imo. its 'neat', but nothing like stephen wolfram was saying. "a new kind of science" it is not.

[BerserkerCatSplat]

You guys have to realize this is alpha-stage stuff, it's in its infancy and the more people use it, the better they can develop it. I threw it a couple ones like "Where is the Taj Mahal?" and it worked perfectly.

[spikerS]

^^ Bingo

It is in alpha testing right now, which means it is at least 2 full revisions before public release.

Alpha is to work out coding issues, Beta for bugs and then a public release.

[googe]

It knew how many licks to the center of a tootsie pop, but not world war 2 casualties

Where are you guys seeing that it's an alpha release? I know its called alpha, but that is the name of the project.

[Crymson]

Well, there's other groups doing stuff similiar. IBM is working on a computer that is going to compete on Jeapardy, similair to their old chess matches. Kind of similiar to this wolfram software, the tricky bit seems to be in making the software understand the questions.

[Primer_Drift]

I asked it
"What is the air-speed velocity of a coconut laden swallow?"
It didnt know what to do with my input.

However, when asked the distance from our moon to Titan on April 4 1918 it did know that it was 8.69 Astro units..

So it sorta works... neat idea anyhow.

[BigMass]

tried it out for a bit. Couldn't answer anything i asked. I'll stick to google.

[bundi]

you have to ask it more scientific stuff. It's not a regular search engine...

Found out about this yesterday and it's pretty cool.

You can input fairly complex algebra and it will solve, graph, and show work! There are many different things it can do it seems, but you have to know how to ask.. it doesn't do natural conversation type input very well.

[Jlude]

I'm only half impressed.

[TKRIS]

There was an article in a magazine I was reading a few months ago (I believe it was either Skeptic or Scientific American) that revisited Wolfram's "New kind of science".
I'm reserving any real position, but it seems, at least at first blush, a little ramshackled to me.

[sputnik]

Interesting concept.

Weak data set.

[D'z Nutz]

Seems to work for me. It answered my question like any human would

[Rat Fink]

.

[Cword]

It works as well as "Deep Thought"

[Doozer]

Try putting in your name. I put in nothing but my name and my brother's name (first names), and it came up with a ton of data about how popular the names are, graphs of how many people have the name (in the US), percentage of people of certain ages with the names, etc. Seemed pretty cool.

[JustGo]

That is the wrong site for me... I put in 'poop'... it blew my MIND!