wolfram | alpha

April Fools' 2013: From Twttr to Google Nose to Nokia's microwave

You probably know this already, but today is April Fools' Day.

And the pranks, they are a-comin'. This year's batch of springtime hijinks from the greater tech community includes the usual onslaught from Google, along with notable entrants from Nokia, Sony, and others. Without further ado, here are some of the highlights.

While it waits for its Lumia smartphones to build up a head of steam, Nokia is showing off a touch-screen microwave oven, the Nokia 5AM-TH1N6 Constellation, which features a Window Phone-like interface ("which can be operated with oven mitts"). Not to be outdone by Samsung … Read more

Twitter is loopy for Vine videos

Thursday's CNET Update is longer than six seconds:

Today's tech news roundup explains why Apple's latest earnings report of record revenue and sales has disappointed investors. Tim Cook also had little to say about an Apple television and fixes to the Maps app.

Netflix surprised analysts with reported profit and growth. Netflix will push out it's own TV series, "House of Cards," on Feb. 1, and new episodes of Arrested Development are arriving in May.

Hundreds of AT&T U-verse customers have had to live without TV, Internet or phone service for several days. … Read more

Wolfram Alpha's Facebook analytics just got smarter

Those looking for greater insight into their Facebook networks will now find enhanced analytics from Wolfram Alpha.

The organization yesterday announced a wide array of updates to a Facebook analytics tool it launched in August. That launch allowed users to see daily posting activity and friend statistics, ranging from location to age ranges. In the new update posted yesterday, Wolfram Alpha has added a new categorization feature that arranges a person's friends, family, and acquaintances into several groups:

Social Insider: A person with many friends in common with you. Social Outsider: A person with few or no mutual friends. … Read more

Wolfram Alpha offers Facebook personal analytics

Wolfram Alpha has found a way to let Facebook users use personal analytics to get a detailed picture of their social media data, including daily posting activity and friend statistics.

It's fairly straightforward: type "Facebook report" into the standard Wolfram|Alpha Web site and the technology generates a report "with more than a dozen major chapters, broken into more than 60 sections, with all sorts of drill-downs, alternate views, etc.," according to CEO Stephen Wolfram, who also explains:

If you're doing this for the first time, you'll be prompted to authenticate the Wolfram … Read more

Why Lumia, Siri? The perils of sorting a 27-way smartphone tie

There has been a disturbance of late in the Appledome.

For Siri has been accused of believing that the Nokia Lumia 900 is better than the iPhone 4S in which she resides.

Even though she changed her mind -- some might say mysteriously -- the stain on her character would not go away.

Well, now the vast and objective brains at Wolfram Alpha have churned their cogs in order to put a stop to this nonsense.

I am grateful to Search Engine Land for having the patience and fortitude to listen to Wolfram Alpha's deep and complex analysis.

However, … Read more

Siri brings nearly 25 percent of Wolfram Alpha traffic

According to a report by the New York Times, nearly 25 percent of the traffic handled by search engine Wolfram Alpha comes from Siri, Apple's voice-controlled personal assistant software.

Apple announced a partnership with Wolfram Alpha in October when it released the iPhone 4S and introduced Siri. Wolfram Alpha differs from other search engines in that its results are based on data curated by Wolfram Alpha, not on algorithms attempting to sort the Web like Google or Bing.

Despite early criticism of Wolfram Alpha's self-described "computational knowledge engine," including its initial focus on mathematical and scientific … Read more

Siri gains access to entire Best Buy catalog

Because of Apple's partnership with search comparison engine Wolfram Alpha, Siri now has the ability to search the entire Best Buy catalog, a feature added to Wolfram Alpha today.

Best Buy has public APIs that have allowed Wolfram Alpha to leverage the data from more than 35,000 products that Best Buy sells. Because Wolfram Alpha was built on a natural-language interface, as Siri is, the ability to get accurate and informative results using voice recognition is that much more impressive.

Siri, using Wolfram Alpha's access to Best Buy's APIs, has access to pricing information, tech specs, … Read more

How to use Siri to see which plane is flying over your head

A while back, news broke of Wolfram Alpha's cool flight-tracking capabilities.

As you probably know, Siri uses Wolfram Alpha to provide search results, so theoretically Siri should also be able to tell you what flights are overhead, right? … Read more

The 404 950: Where we hang it on our dongle (podcast)

Leaked from today's 404 Podcast Episode

Wolfram Alpha Travel Assistant app answers the question, " Where's that plane going?" Who knew Rotten Tomatoes is owned by Warner Brothers? Canada unveils new plastic $100 bills with high-tech security features: changing colors, hidden text, and backward numbers. Tomorrow the world will join Singapore to celebrate the 10th annual World Toilet Day, as decreed by the World Toilet Organization (WTO), the World Toilet Summit, and the World Toilet College.… Read more

Wolfram Alpha launches the coolest flight tracker ever

Have you ever wanted to know where the planes flying overhead were going? If so, you finally have a way to find out.

If you head over to Wolfram Alpha right now and input "flights overhead" into the search box, the site will return all the planes that are currently over your position, their altitude, angle, and slant distance. The site even displays a Sky map to show where planes are in relation to the position of the sun and moon.

But if you want more usable data, like where the planes took off from and where they'… Read more