Wolfram Alpha – Exploring the Computational Universe
Written by: Sean McColgan | Published in Internet Strategy
Wolfram Alpha the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone became Conscious this Weekend.
Having played around with it for a couple of hours now I have to say I am very impressed. Wolfram is no Google killer as the press built it upto be pre launch – it’s more of an additional/complimentary service to your everyday search engine (Google, Yahoo, Live etc).
Wolfram Alpha Technology
Wolfram Alpha is built on top of Mathmatica a computational software program created by British physicist Stephen Wolfram. It is written in 5 million lines of code (using webMathematica and gridMathematica) runs on 10,000 CPUs, contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains.
Wolfram Alpha is No Cuil!
Unlike the ill fated search engine Cuil that released July last year – Wolfram Alpha is definitely here to stay. My initial thoughts are that Google will inevitably look to partner with/purchase Wolfram Alpha. If Wolfram Alpha wanted to stay independent and open their search engine to the mainstream (it currently caters for academics & researchers) they could purchase a search engine off the shelf – Ask.com, Cuil.com? and potentially compete with Google themselves.
Wolfram Alpha Queries
Google Vs Yahoo
Amazon Revenue/Employee
How Many Roads Must a Man Walk Down?
Impressed?
I can see Wolfram Alpha becoming one of my most used online applications right after Google, Gmail & MindMeister. From competitor analysis to determining what high fiber foods I should be eating Wolfram Alpha has the data mined. Really looking forward to getting to grips with the API and seeing what other developers create.
Interested to know – What will you use Wolfram Alpha for?
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