Comments on: Wolfram Alpha is live; give us your impressions

New search engines don't come around every day; let us know what you think about your initial experiences with Wolfram Alpha in here.

[Bobadabob]

What is up with you people..? Wolfram Alpha is NOT (repeat, NOT) a search engine. It is a computational knowledge engine. Read the FAQ's section at their site. Its the first question posed! Given this, you don't use WA to 'do a search on a company'... I guess you can try that, but results are probably going to disappoint, as that's not what its intended use is (as I see it...). Use Google for that! WA is another way of viewing knowledge; its another way of viewing knowledge against some other criteria or computed using different (math) factors/variables. That's not a search engine... Give it time, it'll become clearer I'm sure...

[andrewFCIM]

Okay, I'l accept your defense. It is not Google and we shouldn't use it to search for things we would search for in Google. So now that we are clear on what I cannot do with it, what can I do with it? I have tried several queries trying to cull statistical data or comparison of items/populations all to no avail. This is to me a step backwards. It seems as though I need to thoroughly understand the how and why of this system before I will get anything useful from it. Why would we reintroduce one of the fundamental flaws of traditional libraries intentionally?

[drtrouble]

agree with several comments.
overall, relatively slow.
limited - just read an article about US census data on baby name popularity - query to Wolfram returns with "Wolfram does not know what to do with your input." Google provided multiple sites related to name popularity, meaning, overall and by state. In fairness, did not bring up the Census Bureau.

[knowles2]

yeah but type the name in and you get the exact date ie the percentage of people using that name. Try Peter, you get loads of stastics on the number of people named Peter.

Unfortuantly is does not seem able to give the data for UK, or I have not ask the question the right way.

[jc364]

First impression: very cool, but I can't see myself using it on a regular basis.

[Techstuf]

"Wolfram alpha" chokes.....It's total lack of engagement, of prescience, left me thirsty.

We're talking....tempted to carjack a gatorade truck level of thirst here!

"Wolfram alpha"

might be more accurately termed, at least for now,

"Incandescent filament beta"

LOL....almost

And what's with the upside down star logo? Don't they know that it's one of the preferred symbols of occultists and secret societal cretins everywhere? I guess so.

Think I'm kidding? Youtube search: the words shriner and lucifer together.


TS

[Techstuf]

"Wolfram alpha" chokes.....It's total lack of prescience left me thirsty.

We're talking....tempted to carjack a gatorade truck level of thirst here!

"Wolfram alpha"

might be more accurately termed, at least for now,

"Incandescent filament beta"

Buddum bum

Thanks folks, I'll be here all week.

(insert cymbal clash here)

TS

[oldsecurityguy]

It seems like a calculator which handles word problems, but definitely not a general purpose search engine or reference site.

I've looked for various reference information, such as details on eliptic curve cryptography, X.509 certificates, strong authentication, PCI DSS....and got "Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input." as a result 100% of the time.

In its current state, this is only useful for students, engineers, and other technical people and only for solving precise technical problems. The logo has the tagline "Computational Knowledge Engine", that is exactly what it is. While valuable to someone who needs that, it will be difficult to make money on this application. Consumers will rarely need it (maybe to figure the tip on a restaurant check?).

[sosowhat]

I found an answer to a simple question by typing in (speed of sound feet per second) which gave me the answer in 3 seconds. It came back as meters per second but I looked deeper on the page and got the answer in ft/s which is useful during thunder storms as to how close lighting strikes are to you.

[jhozae]

I didn't read the instructions, but on something Google gives me pages and pages, Wolfram said "no return, don't know what to do with it" A search engine that need instructions? Yeah, sure.