I’m rarely impressed these days but Wolfram Alpha manages to get my attention. While “semantic web” is one of the key phrases you hear being thrown around every so often, current search engine technologies, while much improved over the years, is still not able to deliver results beyond a certain level of sophistication.
WOLFRAM ALPHA vs GOOGLE
For example, Google has a basic calculator: you type in 2 + 2 and Google will tell you the answer is 4. But what if you put in a mathematical equation in words? Google can’t do anything with that because Google, like the other guys, relies on pre-defined information. Current search engines don’t make up information, they deliver available information to you.
Enter Wolfram Alpha. Non-catchy name, amazing technology. It’s still in development but the potential is huge.
The Wolfram Alpha technology is smart enough to deliver results the other guys simply cannot at this time.
WOLFRAM | ALPHA – HUH?
Here is how Wolfram | Alpha (attempts to) explain what it does or will do:
Wolfram|Alpha’s long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything.
Okay… but what the heck does that mean?
It’s difficult to explain so check out this informative video about how Wolfram Alpha works.
If this doesn’t get you excited about the possibilities, nothing will. 
(Personal thoughts: I imagine this technology will be bought up by one of the big guys in the near future.
Judging from the memory hostile name and lack of mainstream marketing right now I’m guessing these guys are not too interested in becoming the next Google themselves.)
Tags: computable knowledge, computational knowledge engine, free form input, google, search engine, semantic web, seo, wolfram alpha
