18 May 2009

Wolfram Alpha arrives, get searching

Wolfram Alpha launched today after much hype and anticipation - hitting the tweetstream by storm pushing (hash)wolframalpha to the top 5 on Tweetstats.

The computational knowledge system is the brainchild of British born Dr Stephen Wolfram, the physicist who changed the world of mathematical research with his computational software program, Mathematica. Mathematica is a program which is used in engineering, scientific, mathematical and other areas of technical computing. So it's no surprise that he decided to focus his mathematical genius on algorithms that may compete with the search giants of our online world.

Wolphram Alpha aims to provide the answer to any question. However it seems that the computational knowledge engine has a long way to go before achieving this. Many search queries return no results, or the results just seem strange for example, after a search for "Where is God", Wolfram Alpha advises God is in fact somewhere in Hungary.

Other rather interesting search queries include:

Query: Do you speak German
Response: I hope to learn many languages, but for now I only know English.

Query: Are you self aware
Response: I am capable of universal computation; that I can say.

Query: Hello
Response: Hello, human.

The engine is clearly geared to more calculative search queries and also provides answers to historical events, weather, stocks, statistics and other known facts. Instead of providing a list of websites which are relative to a search query, Wolphram Alpha presents answers to search queries directly on the results page. This is likely to raise a few questions as to the marketing capabilities of the engine.

Wolfram Alpha is argued to become the biggest rival to search giant Google who currently holds over 90% of the search market in Europe.

The engine currently has about 10,000 CPUs spread across five data centres. The question is whether or not it will be able to cope with the overwhelming amount of search queries it's sure to receive over the days ahead.

During a demonstration at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, Dr Wolfram said: "Our goal is to make expert knowledge accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime." Dr Wolfram played down any notions that the technology would be a Google killer but rather presents it as a way for people to get more out of the information on the web.

Prior to the start of the webcast and final testing, Theo Grey, co-founder of Wolfram Research, said: "If we do melt down when we go live it will not be for lack of effort, or any sort of naive idea of how many queries we might get. It will be because of overwhelming response."

So has Wolfram Alpha lived up to expectations? Well, let's ask Wolfram Alpha:

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