Can A New Search Engine Outdo Google? (Wolfram Alpha)

Source: NPR

Is there anything Google can't do? The creators of Wolfram Alpha think so. The new search engine is slated for release this month. Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land, explains how Wolfram Alpha works. (Audio for this story will be available at approx. 6:00 p.m. ET)

Read more: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104183251

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This New Search Engine is scheduled for release tonight. According to the NPR broadcast it is expected to crash often until the kinks are out.

Here is a "tutorial" showing the potential. This is from Wolfram'Alpha's Site
http://www.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html

Here is the Search Engine once it is operational.
http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html

:hi:

They always fail to measure up. I can remember all the way back to when Dogpile was going to knock Google from first place.

Best I can tell, the engine seems more targeted toward possible solutions rather than merely amounts of keywords.

There will be times when the engine has no answer. Google ALWAYS has an answer. (whether it's correct or not)

:)

Which politician would it tell me to vote for?

Get the point...

The engine is attempting to avoid subjective searches. The example they used was, "who is the best actor?" or close.

I see it as a possible tool for research rather than a one search solves all sort of thing.

The tutorial shows "the look" of results if you give it a shot.

:)

I just watched the demo. I'll try it, but since it doesn't tell you the source of the information, how could one trust its output?

It is like having and answer man when it comes to math...i mean complex math.

Researchers will love it as well best of luck ..they will be pressed to put all the bells and whistles to it that just makes it a theme park.

I like the fact that it seems to be pulling info from existing databases.

We'll see.

:)

http://www.npr.org/templates/player/mediaPlayer.html?action=1&t=1&islist=false&id=104183251&m=104183246

:woohoo:

Wolfram Hart?

The Senior Partners do have extensive resources.

The Wolfram part of the company is Stephen Wolfram the developer of "Mathmatica."

http://www.wolfram.com/

What ever that is ;)

Alpha is like a superficial version of that. It's a beast, but you need to be pretty math-oriented to get the use out of it. If you're interested in things like graphing polynomial functions, you'll love it. If that makes no sense whatsoever to you, then neither will the software.

especially with some of the comments in that show.

I do have to say, that show is loaded with views of certain things. It comes from a few different perspectives, but even in that, it has interesting views.

Some of the dialog really exposes two of the sides in philosophical ideological arguments.

Here is a really good quote during a fight scene.

Angel: "People like you will never understand those who care."
Bad Conduit at Wolframhart: "yea but we won't care"

Can you see how this can define some of the biggest sides in certain parts of society.

I think that show spoke about alot of good parts of character, however it exposes people to traps based on interpretations of metaphors. Nothing is all good or all bad. And I think the writers and producers did fight the good fight, and also got kicked around a bit too. But again that depends on interpretation.

A lot of people just assume its evil, but flip a few symbols, or realize the message may be different then the intended one, and things get really interesting. For example, (note I do not believe in animal representations for groups of people, so I am not supporting the usage, but dog is usually soldier, or another meaning some of you know of.) But what is cool is, Illyria if you add an n is Illyrian a breed of sheep dog, which is a Shepard...

Now I do not know if its associations were intended, or if it is because of certain systems of belief. But when you flip the idea of Illyria being bad, to Illyria being good, alot can be understood.

Its like that in much of TV, violence anger and bad imagery of good things, but just flip the symbol and it tells a different story. And that is the story I found in lots of other places. While playing the part of the character, Amy Ackers also used a head tilt common in canines further supporting the idea that the name similarity was not coincidental.

...and take a break from the internets.

It is supposed to compute answers. Google doesn't do that, outside of simple math or unit conversions. The Wolfram site will have its applications but when I am searching for something outside of a factoid or calculation (99% of my searches), I think Google is still going to win that race.

I recall "Cuil" was the last "Google Killer" and that turned out to be another PR hype.

I see it as a cool tool for computations/comparisons from data that I'd imagine being in a spreadsheet.

:)

:woohoo:

http://www.wolframalpha.com/index.html

:beer:

lazy journalism, I suppose. wolfram aren't trying to compete with google, and ineed have nice things to say about the latter. Alpha is something quite different. I have been beta testing it and am pretty impressed - but it's a different kind of tool, and it takes time to learn to use it. Leastways, it took me several days to get used to what it does before i started using it in ager rather than experimenting.

but general knowledge maybe not so good. I've spent a few minutes playing around with it and it's pretty interesting.