JUNE 10, 2009

WolframAlpha, The Unsearch Engine

There’s Google, there’s Wikipedia, there’s Bing… and now there’s WolframAlpha.

WolframAlpha isn’t your ordinary search engine - it’s a self-titled “computational knowledge” engine.  This internet newborn doesn’t return inquiries with information that already exists on the web, but instead uses snapshots of data that exist in WA’s internal knowledge base. It acquires much of this data from official public or private websites and primary sources.  The goal of the project is to “bring expert knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people.”  Cool in theory, but what about in application?

I first tested the site with my birthday, April 27, 1984, which resulted in a simple list of statistical information about that day in history.  What about a place like my hometown of Torrington, CT?  WolframAlpha gave me a map, population data, and current weather conditions.  So far, so good, but I wanted to see what else it could do.

I entered “1.21 gigawatts.”  A cool rush of relief and familiarity came over me as I saw a nugget of pop culture information among the list of cold, hard facts. This morsel of information validated the site for me: “power required to operate the flux capacitor in the DeLorean DMC-12 time machine.”

WolframAlpha is definitely an interesting search, excuse me, computational knowledge, engine, but is it any better than Google or Wikipedia?  Perhaps people will appreciate WolframAlpha for its  straightforward and simplistic approach vs the saturated experience they’re used to with traditional search functions.  The site boasts that it won’t give you any commentary, just facts (but the reality is that I can probably find both through Google, and typically, I WANT to find both.)

There are limitations, though.  After I entered “Chevy Volt” and my search returned “WolframAlpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.”  What ?  I know there are official GM sites out there outlining the basic vehicle stats and the company’s financial situation - why can’t it read into my search and give me anything and everything related to my terms?  I wanted to know what the car is, how it works, links to related (official) websites, and more.  I guess I’ll just have to Google it.

What’s your take on WolframAlpha?