Wolfram Alpha has finally launched
Wolfram Alpha launches to mixed reviews
/v3-uk/news/2000138/wolfram-alpha-launches-mixed-reviews
18 May 2009, Phil Muncaster , V3
The much-heralded Wolfram Alpha computational knowledge engine has finally launched. Feedback about the site is largely positive, although some users have expressed frustration with persistent deficiencies.
The site differs from a regular search engine in that it processes queries to return the actual answers, instead of returning a list of web pages that may contain the result.
Wolfram Alpha's creator, British-born Stephen Wolfram, has claimed that, thanks to "algorithms and heuristics, lots of linguistic discovery and linguistic curation, and some serious theoretical breakthroughs", the tool is able to understand even complex human language to provide the correct answer.
However, one disgruntled user wrote on the Wolfram Alpha blog that the site is failing on accessibility and usability, as prescribed by Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.
"One of the keys to Google's or Wikipedia's success is accessibility," the user wrote. "I love the results of the machine, but please get to web standards! Use XHTML, MathML, XML with Stylesheets and SVG/Canvas Object for results rendering. Rendered text [and] images are so 1997."
Another user complained that pages do not display properly in Internet Explorer 6, while a third said that the site is "promising but maddeningly incomplete".
"Wolfram Alpha provides some excellent extensions to a search engine and, for some queries, is already better (it seems) than Google," the user wrote. "It is better in the sense that when it 'wins' it presents an exhaustive answer, complete with calculations if appropriate and without all the noise found on Google. However, for most queries it comes up empty."
Feedback on the blog appears positive in the main, and many are heralding the site as the "future of search".
When vnunet.com tried the engine with 'how many swine flu deaths?', it returned an answer without any problems, offering a list of background sources and references.
The engine even managed to have a stab at the more difficult question, 'how many fish in the sea?', estimating a total of 2x10^9 metric tonnes, and detailing its calculations.
Elsewhere, it had difficulty understanding the language we used in our search queries.
'How many UK people own a mobile phone?' was met with the stock response: 'Wolfram Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input'. Dropping 'own a' from the search phrase returned an immediate answer of 60.8 million; however this is just the UK population rather than the number of mobile phone owners.
Andrew Yates, chief executive of market surveillance firm Artesian Solutions, argued that next generation web technologies are making the web more useful for businesses.
"Developments like Wolfram Alpha will ultimately mean business people can avoid ‘fumbling in the dark’ for the information they need," he added.
© Incisive Media Investments Limited 2010, Published by Incisive Financial Publishing Limited, Haymarket House, 28-29 Haymarket, London SW1Y 4RX, are companies registered in England and Wales with company registration numbers 04252091 & 04252093
Do you agree?
Be carefull!
I asked it for the population of Leeds, England - what I appear to have got was Leeds USA, I tried for Leeds, UK but nope, still USA - what was disturbing was that it didn't tell me this in the result, downright dangerous really!!!
Posted by Phil Ogden, 18 May 2009
Not very helpful, as far as I can tell
I tried several queries, trying to enter the sort of thing it expects.
Eg.
"highest building in london"
"chemical composition of rubber"
"most common name in turkey"
"highest selling chart single"
"world coffee consumption "
Every time I just got the answer "W/A isn't sure what to do with your input".
I couldn't really obtain a single answer from this thing. The one result I did get was for:
"average weight of dog", which returned the average weight of a gray wolf.
Posted by Paul Larkin, 18 May 2009
'It doesn't render properly on IE 6'
IE6? That's an ancient browser! Now IE8's out, it just doesn't make sense to run elderly browsers, especially with other, better browsers such as FF also available. Its thanks to people like that, who refuse to upgrade what is one of the most vulnerable parts of a PC that there is viruses, not so much thanks to any inherent vulnerabilities in the OS's themselves.
Posted by JH, 26 May 2009
Good for researchers and students
being a researcher in computing, this tool is very useful indeed for Mathematical operations (it is like an online Mathematica) and I've imagine many Maths students making much use of this.However, it is not perfect, or idiot proof...and despite the claims of the language recognition, even apparent simple phrases to us, would actually form quite complicated structures. As a first step, this is very very promising (they have a much harder problem to solve than Google, which just churns out results).
Posted by michael, 18 May 2009
Look at the big picture
These "problems" are minor implementation details, simple footnotes when compared to Wolfram Alpha's ability recognize and estimate answers to questions like "how many fish in the sea?"
When you embark on an R&D project like Wolfram Alpha, you identify your areas of risk - problems that do not have known solutions - and tackle those first.
It's not using XHTML, MathML, or StyleSheets? It can't show up in IE6? These are trivial issues that have known solutions that can be solved by hiring an inexpensive web developer at a later date. Complaining about web standards compliance is missing the point of Wolfram Alpha.
Posted by Chris, 18 May 2009
Not impressed
I tried three simple queries and got nothing.
Not impressed.
Posted by Terry Carmen, 18 May 2009
A waste of space
Typing in Stephen Wolfram Alpha hype gets the standard respons. Wolfram Alpha isn't sure what to do with my input. Me enither. Google perhaps? This is snake oil. Avoid
Posted by John Palmer, 18 May 2009
Premature
Why did they release it now? It's obviously not ready yet. Is that what the *Alpha* part of the name of the name is referring to?
Posted by Jack, 19 May 2009