Wolfram Alpha holding live Q&A Thursday
Wolfram Research's Stephen Wolfram will take live questions over the Internet Thursday on Wolfram Alpha.
(Credit: Wolfram Research)Wolfram Research is looking for feedback on its new Wolfram Alpha service.
The company plans to hold a Webcast Thursday at 2 p.m. PDT on Justin.tv to discuss Wolfram Alpha, now entering its third week of existence. "We thought you'd enjoy hearing Stephen Wolfram respond to some of this feedback directly," Wolfram said in a blog post Monday afternoon.
CNET readers had plenty of feedback for Wolfram Alpha following its initial debut, marred by technical glitches and an incomplete understanding of how the service was meant to be used. Anyone who didn't get a chance to pose their comments, or still had questions after our comprehensive look at Wolfram Alpha, might want to participate in the Webcast.
We'll also be watching the Webcast, and will report on the questions and answers posed to Stephen Wolfram on Thursday afternoon.
Tom Krazit writes about the ever-expanding world of Internet search, including Google, Yahoo, online advertising, and portals, as well as the evolution of mobile computing. He has written about traditional PC companies, chip manufacturers, and mobile computers, spending the last three years covering Apple. E-mail Tom. 
Unless you ask it specific math questions it's useless.
What if you search for a President? If you search for George Bush (with out the initial) thankfully it comes up with the first one, but beyond that the results are pathetic. I mean it doesn't even tell you when he was President. You go to Wikipedia and you know more in the first paragraph! And.. It's better cited.
Unless your looking to cheat at your homework it's pretty useless.
WA is a computational knowledge engine. In other words, you are (effectively) asking 'questions' of whatever you enter. Your text of George Bush, was looked at by WA as two separate words and you were 'asking' it to find and present any correlations it can compute (through its knowledge algorithms). The results are shown as data tables/charts/diagrams etc...
If you wanted to find out was when someone was a president, then go use Google or Wiki...
Remember, just say it once more to yourself:- "Wolfram Alpha is NOT a search engine like google or yahoo..."
You know why they say it's not a search engine? Because it would be a massive failure right out of the gate if they did. What is it? A "computational knowledge engine". What exactly does that mean? Nothing. It's a made up phrase.
Again. What can this thing do other then solve math questions? Well it can tell me the birth date of the President. Oh and it can... No wait... Just his birth date.
Maybe they should stop trying to market it as something it isn't. Take out all the categories they have. Maybe add some like algebra and geometry - Or whatever.
Stop trying to be something that it isn't.
Oh. And stop making "search engine" a dirty word.
Add a advanced calculator to Google and all of a sudden this thing becomes on massive paper weight. You know why I say that? Because it isn't far fetched for Google to add a advanced calculator - At 1/100th of the cost of this thing.
And no. I don't hate this thing. I think it's pretty cool. But please please please - Get off the hype train. And I don't blame the company for the over blown hype. I blame c|Net.
Two articles were fine. One announcing it and one again when it launched. This is absurd. Of course half the articles on c|Net are absurd (at least the "news" part) so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.
- by aMUSICsite June 3, 2009 3:08 PM PDT
- Q: When do we get Wolfram Beta ;)
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