Can you give us some examples on search results for Asia or Europe? What happens if you search for e.g. chemical formulas?

Except for the language, I don't think Alpha has a strong U.S. bias, so you should be able to get similar information for cities all over the world.

How on earth could this possibly add any value whatsoever?
This is maybe 1% of the missing 10%!
Pah!

(hint: sarcasm)

Just my two cents anyway...

Of course informational and factual queries are harder to monetise...

period.

1. It cannot answer subjective or political questions, AND

2. Because it's a computer, it will occasionally make farcical comments like "The Statute of Liberty weights 13 oz. and is made out of Dr. Pepper."

For instance, when I search for the weather in Oakland now, I get a hundred different sites claiming to give me the weather. But I choose to visit the ones that are the most reliable based on what I know, and based on other people's knowledge (represented by the ranking of the sites on the page), etc.

With this, I'm forced to trust that the computer already made those decisions for me, and is now showing me the most reliable weather forecast. I suppose I could trust it, but it seems backwards to me.

I agree -- it's more like Wikipedia, but probably without the instantaneous updates. Could this be a genius idea without a practical application?

What about funny, creepy, interesting, foolish videos? The mashine wouldn´t be able to show something like that, or even webistes with exactly the videos I need.
But not only videos, also satiric textextparts, blogs, peoples opinions on products, multimedia, fun, buisness, nearly everything isn´t suitable for this searching engine.

It´s suites only for technical things, which are 100 procent true und can be prooved. So it makes sure, that the machine isn´t doing any mistakes.

I´m worried that, wolfram alfa will not be able even to be as good as wikipedia.

Fast forward and now we have Wolfram Alpha. I don't like the name -- Larry Ellison once noted that at least he didn't name Oracle after himself, a direct reference to Siebel Systems (which Oracle eventually acquired) -- but I like the concept. (Of course, I'm also guilty of being an early Twine proponent, so what can I say.)

"Google killer" stuff is just hype. I doubt that Stephen would use this phrase. But if it's all it seems to be, it will certainly be a useful Google companion, much more so than something like Scirus (which is more like Google Scholar). And there's no reason why Google couldn't acquire Wolfram Alpha. Hey, maybe Oracle could acquire Wolfram Alpha; the Oracle M&A team has been pretty much on target for the past several years. Wouldn't this be a interesting play ... and it would help make the brand known to a much wider audience. Maybe Microsoft would want it, but they'd probably screw it up. And using a stretch of the Oracle rationale, Cisco or EMC might want it.

Anyway, it's good to see progress when it comes to search. It's good for Google to have commercial competition, which it really doesn't these days. I wish Wolfram Alpha all the best -- and hope all of us get a cool search appliance.

(To Stephen, just in case you read this. At our dinner I was the guest of a beautiful blonde named "Susan." I don't recall her last name, and it wasn't her maiden name, but the name she took from her first marriage. Since she was a beauty in her own right -- and the most beautiful egghead I've ever seen -- you probably remember her. She eventually got remarried to a guy whom she met on a scuba diving trip. At that time I was in the invasive medical devices and biodiagnostics sector, early bioMEMS stuff. Our precision engineering and flexible automation company made the equipment for manufacturing balloon catheters, atherectomy devices, RF ablation probes, in vivo blood gas and pressure sensors, and various biodiagnostic, mostly in vitro, rapid test kits. After that I went to Samsung, Microsoft, Oracle, META Group, in this order. And my day job these days is running the U.S. and China ops for a Spanish renewables company in solar [standard modules, LCPV, MCPV], wind [small wind] and electric vehicles [FCVs]; I'm primarily based out of our China HQ in Qingdao and have been living in China for the past five years.)

2. Because it's a computer, it will occasionally make farcical comments like "The Statute of Liberty weights 13 oz. and is made out of Dr. Peppe

- technical information: I would love to be able to type:'How to configure my dlink x123 wireless router' and get the answer on the first try.

- a powerful understanding of the language used for the queries, will also lead to much better answers. Today we have to train ourself to think our searches in terms of keywords. Pick the wrong one and the results are not very useful; They seen to be able to understand a lot more than simple keywords.

You are in the minority.

"my brain is remarkably good at [thinking]"
Many people aren't so hot at thinking.

"I don't mind thinking"
Of those who can think, a fair number don't like to think.

"it's what I've always done"
Almost no one I know can say that (myself definitely included).

Not saying this thing will remake the world, but then again, look at some of the useless crap that remakes the world. Facebook is not a Nobel prize winning idea, but it's changing people's lives. So are Craigslist and Ebay. None of these things were the culmination of anything great, but nevertheless millions of man-hours and dollars are spent on them.

The unthinking masses matter. A lot.

This is like the data on the mathamatica website/products, combined with statistical information.

Great for scientists and scientific type research. A lot out there already exists in the arena which was originally sold on CD-ROM.

Is everybody just forgotten all the wonderful interfaces and the Multimedia CD-ROM revolution?

I can't feeling that is nothing new, and this data exists already on the web, and it could have been presented better.

The second video here looks like pure advertising, with cameras focusing more on the DELL logos than anything else...

it might be complimentary to a google search -:

keyword - 'holiday + india'
google = 1 million search results of which i might check only ten satisfying results
adwords = hotels, holiday packages, destinations etc
Alpha = everything about a holiday in india including availability of rooms in budget hotels, destinations according time of visit, which flights/trains/cabs to take, fares, rents, climate, ploitical scenario, forex, and everythng you can imagine.

so besides being a tutorial for any student it intends to solve the daily complexities of nature.

what we have to wait and watch is -:

how long can the keyquestion be and limitations of the computation that wolfram servers process. so the debate is not on the answer, which i believe will be the best, but on the key question.

It might answer a question for free but will it allow the commercial use of the answer - eg. it might help me put together a website but will i be able to publish it?
i might use a seriezs of questions and make a sizeable meaningful data of the answers but can i ...

and

will it be able to do things for me - eg. if i ask it to track an auction or a shareprice, will it be able to track and act on my behalf.(it would require it to track and then login with my credentials and take the action) if it does - whoa - we have a new world ahead of us...

i hope for the best and wish WRI all the best ...

i hope WRI is able to evolute into an industry like google and find answers both the commercial as well as the altruistic way ...

wondering what media solutions they will offer ... alphawords/ wolfwords/ werewolf or alphawolf

:)

I know this will be a great system but I like to make my own decision of what sources I want to use.
Weather as an example. If I searched for the weather online I could get 5 different sites for example. I know that 1 of them has a sensor in the middle of my city, but another ones is over 30 miles away. The one in the city is a local university, but the one 30 miles away is a governmental website. Wolfram Alpha chooses the governmental website because it's 'official' say. But that information would be woefully inaccurate. I know that as I have looked at the sites to check this information.

I'm looking forwards to see how WA works but I'm at a bit of a loss as to how you could use it beyond basic encyclopedic or wikipedic information.

Growth and success needs to consider localization as semantics in language is very nuanced.

Wolfram alpha seems to be a mathematical software, of course it can answer many questions, searching for a website requires math too, so why am i going to use wolfram alpha instead of google search engine or anyother google product or service?

I do not think so, the ads that said google killer was only to spread thr word of wolfram alpha in a negative way in order to create impact on its product, does not work for me! I got to see it, evaluate it and judge it for myself.

To end this, wolfram alpha is new, so it will have bugs, we are talking of what it is but, personally i did not see wolfram alpha in action, in real action like i seen google products and services, besides, even if wolfram alpha is really really good, i would not use it, it is more like a software for advanced users or people that actually need all of that information, not for common people like me.

Besides all this, google search engine can provide the same information as wolfram alpha, not in one page of course and not in only one service, but i did not see wolfram alpha did it also, and i beleave they can not beat google in any way.

If you use google advanced operators you can achieve your search goal.

I suppose I think the words "Ignorance is bliss" applies to users that see Google and the internet that way (probably us all me included).

I see the internet as a way to share information with the entire world instantly. Unfortunately having access to all the information in the world at the same time means that you have to search though all that billions and billions of gigabytes of information available, right.

My experience with google is that the answer I get when even doing a more directed search is probably representative of about a millionth if not less of all the infomation out there about the topic I was searching for combined.

So I think they have something going by giving a "Summary" type of answer. It is my understanding that this type of technology can also be used to direct you to the page that have the most relevance to your question. And what about possibly building a profile of how you are thinking, thus understanding what you meant by your question better.

Now google is now almost synonomous with the inetrenet, but remember google is not actually the internet, the interenet still exists without google, right.

So I think if WA can direct me to sites that have more relevance to what Ii am looking for, I will CAN google in a second, belive you me !

Maybee Wolfram Alpha is not perfect in terms of interface and the way the widest range of peolple would like to use it but I think they have something valuable. Theer is a considerable jump from crawling the web, making keyword indexes to searching the web making an index that has a deeper representation so I am by no way convinced that google will be able to do this, without WA's help no matter how much money they throw at it, maybe this is just enough to prompt more research into the field.

Time will tell

I do not see this company as a competitive threat to google but a new era of engine computing should be of a concern to google as it has not demonstrated its lead in this aspect.

This technology can be revolutionary in a way that we have not yet imagine.Ibm's Watson is scheduled for launch around 2010 , The watson engine would face off with jeopardy in a live televise show with the aim of knocking off the human contestants in the jeopardy show.one could easily envision that ibm would put this engine on the web.

When technology like this emerge ,various players also emerge .We can look at what is happening in the cloud computing arena where we have Amazon.com, google , ibm,sun,etc.

Thank you for the screenshots and info!!

But there are questions about the neutrality of WA's data sources, and I don't necessarily like the fairly arrogant assumption that there is only one accurate set of data about the world.

Also, Wolfram Alpha's branding is shit, and will suffer because it's egotistical.

(1.) Who discovered radium?

(2.) Where is Atlantis?

(3.) How do we make gold from lead?

(4.) Can robots dream?

(5.) What is a sprite? [This is my trick question since ‘Sprite’ is a drinks brand as well as a type of fairy.]

(6.) When did Homo Erectus become Homo Sapien?

(7.) Why are we here?

(8.) How many light bulbs are there in the world?

(9.) Who is the Vitruvian Man?

(10.) Where is Schrodinger’s cat?

These are all science-related questions which is where Mathematica (a reference algorithm of Wolfram Alpha) has been originally rooted. For the purposes of objectivity, it was only right to ask questions as close to a like-for-like basis as possible.

In several instances WA said it wasn't sure what to do with the input and didn't semantically connect the terms in the search query or generate relevant visuals. Google at least made some attempt to provide relevant and related links. True Knowledge, on not understanding the question, put the onus back on the individual to define the search term via its user wiki.

The result of Question 10 was particularly surprising. Natural expectation would be that WA would generate the integrals which form Erwin Schrodinger's postulations on quantum physics and compare/contrast these with Einstein's proof and Hawking's calculations.

It didn't generate any results and only produced a "Wolfram Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."

There's definitely room for improvement and it's premature for it (and every other NLP/Semantic play) to position themselves as "Google killers" --- particularly given that Google Squared seems to be imminent.

All-in-all, though, competition is healthy for this space and great for us as information consumers, knowledge connectors and sense discoverers.