OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/21513/Wolfram_Alpha_Search_Engine_Goes_Live Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Tue, 21 May 2013 14:51:08 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com Comment by merkoth http://www.osnews.com/thread?364175 http://www.osnews.com/thread?364175 What an amazing piece of software! Sure, it needs a lot of work, but as a software developer myself, I just can't imagine the amount of work that has been put into this project. Still, it doesn't show my birthday as something relevant, which should be fixed ASAP ;-) Mon, 18 May 2009 23:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (merkoth) Comments RE: Comment by merkoth http://www.osnews.com/thread?364244 http://www.osnews.com/thread?364244
Still, it doesn't show my birthday as something relevant, which should be fixed ASAP ;-)


like what? a very important moment in time? ;) Tue, 19 May 2009 06:18:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Brunis) Comments disappointing http://www.osnews.com/thread?364329 http://www.osnews.com/thread?364329 It's really disappointing... not really the software features, but how much limited it is... all output is "protected" in image format, so you can't actually use them (and they don't load most of the time now...).

search add-ons to browsers/homepages can't really do anything besides moving you to a WA's web page (no web2.0 cookie for you!)...

...so, in the end I'm really disappointed that even if the software looks very interesting and promising (besides different outputs for the same input, probably duo these "protections"), but the user experience looks like the last concerning for them... makes it kind useless... Tue, 19 May 2009 14:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (JrezIN) Comments RE: disappointing http://www.osnews.com/thread?364373 http://www.osnews.com/thread?364373 Agreed. But I just found out that you can download the search results as PDF. And in the PDF, the text is real text. Tue, 19 May 2009 17:38:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (evert) Comments not impressed... so far http://www.osnews.com/thread?364409 http://www.osnews.com/thread?364409 perhaps i am using it wrong, but it dosen't seem to really work for me. It seems like it will only have a response to highly expected inquiries. 'the USA GDP' will yield a result but try finding out economic stats for USSR in the 80s are. I also tried to get it to tell me how to make cookies- another failure. I really hope that this is just a taste of whats to come, else wise its a POS flop. Tue, 19 May 2009 19:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (crossbones) Comments RE: disappointing http://www.osnews.com/thread?364417 http://www.osnews.com/thread?364417 It offers the same data as plain text that is copyable when you click on an image or a table.

Of course it would be preferable to use SVG and MathML to present it in the first place, but maybe that will come in future too. Tue, 19 May 2009 20:00:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (navaraf) Comments RE: not impressed... so far http://www.osnews.com/thread?364419 http://www.osnews.com/thread?364419 The USSR GDP is missing in their database, but it's not much of a wonder, since only objectively verifiable data are supposed to be there.

I also tried to get it to tell me how to make cookies- another failure.


That's what Google is for. This isn't supposed to replace Google, it applies known algorithms to objectively verifiable data where queries are entered as natural sentence (possibly with some additional assumptions). It can tell you what the cookie is made of and it knows more than 20 cookie types, but it can't tell you how to make it. Tue, 19 May 2009 20:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (navaraf) Comments Comment by Jondice http://www.osnews.com/thread?364514 http://www.osnews.com/thread?364514 not good Wed, 20 May 2009 08:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Jondice) Comments No precursors? http://www.osnews.com/thread?364579 http://www.osnews.com/thread?364579 From the Wolfram FAQ:

What is the closest precursor to Wolfram|Alpha?

In concept, perhaps Leibniz's characteristica universalis from the late 1600sâ€"or the science-fiction computers of the 1960s. Technologically, many pieces of Wolfram|Alpha have precursors, but the ambitious scope of the whole project is believed to be unique.


Oh, come on. What about Cyc?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc Wed, 20 May 2009 15:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wannabe geek) Comments