That doesn’t roll off the tongue easily now does it?
Here is the new search based platform that all of the digerati are buzzing about. It is called Wolfram/Alpha. It is being called the next BIG THING in search, and knowledge capture and presentation.
The company has great intellectual pedigree — and the strength of the architecture and the algorithms are top notch — although the results for some searches was running slow for me tonight.
This is a platform for serious people — doing serious work — asking big questions; who have an analytic bent; people smarter than me.
I asked “Why did the Capitals lose in game 7 to the Penguins?”; and didn’t like the answer I received.
Here is a funny article too on top 10 questions and answers on the platform; click here to get a smile.
The people behind this project are wicked smart — I would never sell them short — but to me proof is in the pudding and so far — I don’t see how Wolfram /Alpha will put Google out of business. But what do I know? I will now ask Wolfram/Alpha if they will put Google out of business — check out their answer here.
Ted:
Maybe I’m slow but I played with this thing for an hour and half and I wasn’t impressed. I like the concept – I believe some sort of serch engine that takes real plain text questions interprepts them CORRECTLY and then gathers relevant output data and then assembles it into multiple relevant answers in relevant complex formats like graphs, etc is the right paradigm for the next big thing. So these very smart guys are on to soimething.
However from my 1 1/2 hours of playing with the current version I believe the algorithms need a lot of work on both ends. I’ll bet I put in the normal sort of quiries, etc folks will want to put in and get answers to. I got lots and lots of the canned response that it didn’t quite know what to do with my input when I asked questions in plain text. Then when I input things in as complex search quiries using + sisgns as folks who’ve used google, yahoo, etc will likely do when they get nonsensical answersa I got some more nonsense..
So like you I like the concept but I don’t see this engine displacing google in a big way in the next 12 months which as we both know is “a coon’s age” in web time…
If you didn’t like the Penguins/Caps answer, then you’ll hate what happens when you type in: Google Yahoo AOL
Just razzin ya sir, you’ve done an amazing job in everything you’ve done!
Wolfram was never intended to put Google out of business, nor will it be. Says CNet, “Its no replacement for Google, but it has the potential to be the smartest search utility on the web if only the people using it are smart enough to know how.” (as quoted by Newsy)
Now, some of it isn’t the user’s fault. Wolfram’s database is still tiny (despite having some number of trillions of datapoints) and almost exclusively limited to science, math, and history. However, Mr. Wolfram has made it clear he and his team will be working long and hard making more information accessible through Wolfram. However, I think the nature of the data presented (computational) will always restrict the user base to a more analytical type.