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Wolfram Alpha isn't the "Google killer" that many hyped it up to be prior to its 2009 launch. Instead, the self-described computational knowledge engine takes a completely different approach to letting users find and analyze information. Rather than scouring the Web and ranking everybody's pages in the order it thinks we'd find them useful, it uses its own data sets and computational power to return detailed reports and analysis about whatever topics users query it for.

Tomorrow, the service will ramp things up a notch when its "pro" version launches. For $5 per month, Wolfram Alpha Pro will allow users to do way more with its data, as well as enable them to upload their own. The premium offering will be discounted for students and enterprise users.

Steven Wolfram and team have gathered together a big timeline of key events in the history of systematic data and computable knowledge. The team has created a beautiful infographic and a five foot long poster available for mail order (I just bought one, $15 with shipping) in anticipation of the Wolfram Data Summit in DC early next month. We're really at the dawn of a whole new age of data creation, so this timeline will likely look like pre-history relatively soon, but it's fascinating and important none the less.

"[When] I first looked at the completed timeline," Wolfram writes, "the first thing that struck me was how much two entities stood out in their contributions: ancient Babylon, and the United States government... [It] is sobering to see how long the road to where we are today has been. But it is exciting to see how much further modern technology has already made it possible for us to go."

Wolfram, the company behind the Mathematica computational software and the Wolfram Alpha "computational knowledge" search engine, has released a new document format today - the Computable Document Format (CDF). As the name suggests, the CDF aims to bring real-time interactivity and computational power to documents, by enabling them to include a variety of graphs and formulas.

This makes a "computable" document quite different than a "print" document. The information isn't fixed but can be manipulated by the reader. Unlike static formats, CDFs are "as interactive as apps, yet as everyday as documents," say Wolfram. "Central to the concept are knowledge apps, interactive diagrams, or info apps - the live successors of traditional diagrams and infographics."

The computational knowledge engine Wolfram|Alpha is launching the first three of a series of new "course assistant" apps today. These apps, available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad, are designed to take advantage of the Wolfram|Alpha technology in the service of supporting some of the most popular courses in high school and college.

The idea is to be able to quickly access the pertinent capabilities of Wolfram|Alpha relevant for specific subject areas. Currently, these subject areas are Algebra, Calculus, and Music Theory. But the company says it plans to add apps for other subjects - "for every major course, from elementary school to graduate school," - including those fields outside math and science.

Computational engine Wolfram Alpha's Managing Director, Barak Berkovitz, talked about the data layer of the mobile Web at a session this afternoon at the Open Mobile Summit in San Francisco.

Like geo-data has done for location, Wolfram Alpha adds a new layer to the Web: a factual dimension. This will impact the Web's evolution, says Berkovitz.

The goal of Wolfram Research is both impressive and bold: to make the world's knowledge computable. Best known, perhaps, for the Wolfram Alpha, the online answer engine, Wolfram today announced a new Volunteer Central site, a place where volunteers can contribute data to the project.

There are a number of areas in which Wolfram Alpha is currently seeking volunteer input: species data about fish and birds, currency data, and literary and mythology information. (On a personal note, I must say I love a company that can help me track the path of the Sun and give me information about various Sun gods.)

Until now, Wolfram Alpha's computational knowledge engine was mostly tied to the project's website. Starting today, however, users will also be able to use the Wolfram Alpha Widget Builder to bring some of Wolfram Alpha's power to their own sites. The service, which is launching as a public beta today, allows anybody to quickly create a Wolfram Alpha-powered widget without any programming knowledge. Later this year, Wolfram also plans to re-launch the Wolfram Alpha API, which is currently too expensive for most developers (even students currently pay a minimum of $60 to use the API).

When we first reviewed Siri last February, we called it "one of the most ambitious mobile services we have seen in the last few years." At the time, we acknowledged that, while Siri - which was recently acquired by Apple - has answers for a plethora of questions, it wouldn't be able to handle them all. We lamented that "sadly the app doesn't use Wolfram Alpha to give you answers to factual questions (yet)."

Today, we lament no longer, as the latest update to the virtual personal assistant notes that it can now provide you with "more knowledge and computation results" using "computational knowledge engine" Wolfram Alpha.

The launch of the "computational knowledge engine" Wolfram Alpha was one of the most anticipated product launches of early 2009. Since then, it's been rather quiet around Wolfram Alpha, even though the company continues to add new features and data on a regular basis. Today, we had a chance to talk to Wolfram Research's founder Stephen Wolfram about the first year and the company's plans for the future.

Yesterday, Wolfram Alpha announced the price drop of its iPhone app and the return of its mobile site. Today, after Apple itself broke a press embargo that was originally set for Saturday, Wolfram Alpha is also announcing the launch of its iPad app, as well as the launch of its new Wolfram Alpha for e-books program. The fact that Wolfram Alpha would launch an iPad app - which will retail in a bundle with the iPhone app for $1.99 - doesn't really come as a shock. The e-book program, however, comes as a bit of a surprise, but makes perfect sense in light of Wolfram's new push towards making Wolfram Alpha ubiquitous.