Wolfram Alpha

My father was the first person that told me about this website. He described it as the future of search engines. The next big thing. I was skeptical, but wrote the name down to research later. Wolfram Alpha is an odd name, but mercifully not a goofy web 2.0 generic Google, Bebo, or Qoop. After loading it up in my browser and searching “Orlando Web Design” I was not impressed. Not only did my website not  show up in the rankings, there were no rankings. All that was displayed was “Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.” I closed the window and didn’t think much of it until I read about the website a few months later in a copy of Wired. It turns out the website is not a search engine, but a way to organize and display useful data based on the user’s keywords. Upon returning to the site and doing a search for “Orlando, Florida” I was given a litany of statistics and information. Everything from the city population to the approximate elevation was at my fingertips. I could see the potential moving forward if the technology caught up to the idea. Imagine planning a vacation to Jamaica. You would type in “Jamican Vacation” and Wolfram Alpha would output the most scenic locations, hotels with ratings and reviews close to those locations, as well as images, maps, and plane ticket prices. It’s really what the future of technology is all about. Gather and exhibit the useful while trashing the unnecessary. Harness the vast array of information on the web in a way that my Grandmother would find easy to use. If they continue to develop this technology Wolfram Alpha will be the Encyclopedia Britannica to Google’s Yellow Pages.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 17th, 2009 at 11:22 pm and is filed under Search Engines. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.