Many news sites (e.g., TechCrunch) have been hyping WolframAlpha as a threat to Google, and it's natural that people are trying Google-style search queries. However, looking at the examples at the site (http://www.wolframalpha.com/examples ), it's clearly not intended as a direct competitor to Google, and it's not at all surprising that it doesn't perform so well on the Google-style queries people are trying. My first take is that it's more like learning Mathematica: you need to learn how to ask it the right sorts of questions, and the examples look like a useful way of learning to do that.
No doubt many of the news outlets who've been hyping WolframAlpha as a competitor to Google will now denounce it as having failed, when it wasn't meant as a competitor at all. It's the news sites which have failed.
I'm not so sure the blame falls entirely on the news sites. As I've watched a seemingly unnatural amount of attention fall upon an unreleased product over the past few weeks I've come to the conclusion that we're being led around by Wolfram's PR firm. If that's the case and they were using 'google-killer' to pick up buzz, I think Wolfram deserves to fall on its face.
(That's not to say it's not an interesting product).
As mathematical queries give by far the most impressive results, this is essentially just a very elaborate advertisement for Mathematica -- just as NKS was.
This was also my first impression here. Try to compare things, it works beautifully!
-> http://tinyurl.com/qevs58
yes, it works also with "mars earth" but commands are way cooler :)
WolframAlpha is Not threat to Google it just have different target of people. It's more like online scientific encyclopedia + can preform complex math calculation.
I think wolfram alpha is a better deal than Cuil, but might get as bad a name because of their flawed positioning.
The method does not work without domain specificity. Its not a general purpose tool. Marketing it as one is the biggest mistake wolfram has done and is the reason most people will be dissapointed and inevitably try to slot it as another cuil.
However, if you are willing to disregard that largely cosmetic flaw, the computational engine is very impressive stuff. Assuming, in the future they are able to market/position it properly for specific domains for which they ensure that data is enough, this is going to be an awesome tool and may well compete with Google for the domain specific queries.
I think the majority of the populace will not have the wherewithal to appreciate it. The part that does will see its potential, and I think that's all Wolfram cares about.
I am very surprised with how it can intelligently generate forms based on a question. For example, the search "Am I too drunk to drive?" (http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Am+I+too+drunk+to+drive...) generates a form where you can input various variables to answer the question.
Need more than one example to call it intelligent. I tried "Am I mentally retarded?" (IQ test?), "Am I at risk for cancer?" (risk factor questionaire?), "Am I at risk for lung cancer?", "Do cigarettes cause cancer?" all without ANY results. Help me out here, what kinds of questions is it smart about?
Fortunately for Woz, he probably didn't have all the hype in the world surrounding his product. Wolfrom might be an interesting experiment, but all of the Google-killer talk might make it into more of a Cuil.
this is probably only useful to someone doing math stuff, anyone else its more or less completely useless
Some of the other examples posted as comments here look useful in disciplines outside math. I just put in a hairy system of two equations in two unknowns[1] made up randomly by my students, so that none of the coefficients or constants were preselected for easy computation. Alpha calculated the exact rational number solution set for x and y right away. Alas, the export results to .PDF link wasn't working just now, but that would be a cool feature for teaching my math class.
[1] 7672x+1357y=3, 63/8659x+1862y=5672
x = -9514160366/17670859355, y = 53828777381/17670859355
I think it might be because the output comes from Mathematica's engine, and the best way to render various formulas, tables, charts, etc. is to just use the same graphical output.
Everyone should stop being impressed that it can answer complex math questions. It obviously has instances of Mathematica available to it, that's probably the first thing Wolfram hooked it up to.
This isn't a search engine. It's a web-based expert system with strong data-manipulation and presentation capabilities.
I'm completely underwhelmed. Chalk it up to hype I guess.
I couldn't get anything for "Most popular names in 2008," and when I clicked the "Examples" tab and clicked Socioeconomic Data->Countries and used its default of France, it gave me three pieces of info (country code, full name and something else) and apparently tried to load some kind of information underneath, but it never happened.
Maybe it's because it's launch day.
Edit: Here's another thing that bothers me. It doesn't give you the source of its info. So when I click "Names" and have it give me info on a specific name, when it tells me it's the 8th most popular (in 2007, nicely outdated), I'd like to know how it deduces that rather than take it as fact.
Interestingly, there's a "Source information »" link at the bottom that doesn't work.
Think I'll stick with well-crafted Google queries and more primary sources.
Obviously it isn't a competitor for Google search, or any other web search, but it might be a competitor for similar products being developed by those companies.
For that reason a search company may want to acquire them either before they get too big and expensive, or to prevent a competitor from performing an instant catch-up in this market by buying instead of developing.
Therefore, I was wondering what the market cap was of Wolfram Research, since they aren't exactly a small, pre-profit startup.
This isn't a complaint about a lack of data, since that can be updated after the preview feedback allows them to adjust the more important technology; I just enjoyed the irony of it having no information about Wolfram Alpha LLC, and only providing some useless web traffic stats for wolfram.com when asked about Wolfram Research.
I've been playing with this for a while, and Hans Rosling's TED Talk keeps popping into my mind (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpKbO6O3O3M). It seems like the potential of this isn't from the search, but the much easier access to data. Once we start to see some fully developed applications using the API, then we'll begin to see a much better picture of W|A's true potential.
What a completely useless site. Unless you are careless enough to run javascript, the site will not return any information. They say "To see full output you need to enable Javascript in your browser", but really return NO information without javascript. I don't know what they return with javascript, because I don't use it, like any sensible person.
I'm sorry but I see no connection between my results and the ones in the demo. I'm tempted to go back and mimic the queries from the demo.
It fails to retrieve simple data, let alone conduct computations with it. Could not find the minimum wage in my state. Could not retrieve average income. Basic CIA Factbook stuff...
[+] [-] michael_nielsen|17 years ago|reply
No doubt many of the news outlets who've been hyping WolframAlpha as a competitor to Google will now denounce it as having failed, when it wasn't meant as a competitor at all. It's the news sites which have failed.
[+] [-] garply|17 years ago|reply
(That's not to say it's not an interesting product).
[+] [-] axod|17 years ago|reply
I don't think it's the news outlets fault if the founder is making outlandish claims.
[+] [-] amichail|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ujal|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vladocar|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sonink|17 years ago|reply
The method does not work without domain specificity. Its not a general purpose tool. Marketing it as one is the biggest mistake wolfram has done and is the reason most people will be dissapointed and inevitably try to slot it as another cuil.
However, if you are willing to disregard that largely cosmetic flaw, the computational engine is very impressive stuff. Assuming, in the future they are able to market/position it properly for specific domains for which they ensure that data is enough, this is going to be an awesome tool and may well compete with Google for the domain specific queries.
[+] [-] stcredzero|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Sephr|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swolchok|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sobriquet|17 years ago|reply
How does it know I'm going to keep drinking? Probably because it's only 9pm...
[+] [-] jokermatt999|17 years ago|reply
Edit: Still, interesting.
[+] [-] frisco|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] omarish|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dcurtis|17 years ago|reply
For example, these nifty queries:
us debt / us population / us life expectancy in days
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=us+debt+%2F+us+populati...
and
(MSFT net income / MSFT employees)
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=%28MSFT+net+income+%2F+...
[+] [-] schwanksta|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vaksel|17 years ago|reply
Based on the bad results, I can see that this is probably only useful to someone doing math stuff, anyone else its more or less completely useless
[+] [-] tokenadult|17 years ago|reply
Some of the other examples posted as comments here look useful in disciplines outside math. I just put in a hairy system of two equations in two unknowns[1] made up randomly by my students, so that none of the coefficients or constants were preselected for easy computation. Alpha calculated the exact rational number solution set for x and y right away. Alas, the export results to .PDF link wasn't working just now, but that would be a cool feature for teaching my math class.
[1] 7672x+1357y=3, 63/8659x+1862y=5672
x = -9514160366/17670859355, y = 53828777381/17670859355
[+] [-] amichail|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dsims|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nixme|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] txxxxd|17 years ago|reply
This is bad for both accessibility and readability.
[+] [-] unknown|17 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] quizbiz|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ryuio|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mojuba|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GHFigs|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gcanyon|17 years ago|reply
This isn't a search engine. It's a web-based expert system with strong data-manipulation and presentation capabilities.
[+] [-] paulgb|17 years ago|reply
True, it's an expert system and doesn't appear to be anything new in terms of AI, but it's still pretty impressive.
(edit: according to Wikipedia, "It is written in 5 million lines of Mathematica [...]")
[+] [-] schwanksta|17 years ago|reply
I couldn't get anything for "Most popular names in 2008," and when I clicked the "Examples" tab and clicked Socioeconomic Data->Countries and used its default of France, it gave me three pieces of info (country code, full name and something else) and apparently tried to load some kind of information underneath, but it never happened.
Maybe it's because it's launch day.
Edit: Here's another thing that bothers me. It doesn't give you the source of its info. So when I click "Names" and have it give me info on a specific name, when it tells me it's the 8th most popular (in 2007, nicely outdated), I'd like to know how it deduces that rather than take it as fact.
Interestingly, there's a "Source information »" link at the bottom that doesn't work.
Think I'll stick with well-crafted Google queries and more primary sources.
[+] [-] edmccaffrey|17 years ago|reply
For that reason a search company may want to acquire them either before they get too big and expensive, or to prevent a competitor from performing an instant catch-up in this market by buying instead of developing.
Therefore, I was wondering what the market cap was of Wolfram Research, since they aren't exactly a small, pre-profit startup.
This isn't a complaint about a lack of data, since that can be updated after the preview feedback allows them to adjust the more important technology; I just enjoyed the irony of it having no information about Wolfram Alpha LLC, and only providing some useless web traffic stats for wolfram.com when asked about Wolfram Research.
[+] [-] rms|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swolchok|17 years ago|reply
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+is+the+airspeed+ve...
But it doesn't know "How do you get to Carnegie Hall?"
[+] [-] jack7890|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] middus|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] resdirector|17 years ago|reply
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=is+wolfram+alpha+self+a...
"Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input."
[+] [-] chris24|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jibiki|17 years ago|reply
It correctly parsed my query, but didn't have the data.
Google gives an answer (8.4%) but it doesn't come from trustworthy sources.
EDIT: "first prime greater than 1000000" gives 1,000,003.
[+] [-] jokermatt999|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SecurityMatters|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sonink|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] peter_severin|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mziulu|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quizbiz|17 years ago|reply
It fails to retrieve simple data, let alone conduct computations with it. Could not find the minimum wage in my state. Could not retrieve average income. Basic CIA Factbook stuff...