Wolfram Alpha—Semantic Search Is Born, by Woody Evans, Newsbreaks (May 21)
Article describes some of the workings of Wolfram Alpha, which is described as "being a really smart way to access most of the best reference shelves on the planet."
"Wolfram Alpha relies on the data sets it has acquired (much of which are freely available from governments and public domain sources) and computers in data centers maintained by Wolfram Research. With all that power, the engine can interpret keywords such as weather and oakland into meaningful categories by way of "input interpretation." The term "weather" remains weather, but the term "oakland" is interpreted to mean "Oakland, California" by default, according to rules set by the program. Heavily symbolic and mathematical queries are interpreted and computed even more handily: "water 550C 3 atm," another sample search Wolfram demonstrated, becomes the substance water at 550° centigrade and at "3 atmospheres" of pressure. Alpha can then tell the user useful facts about the nature of water under such conditions, including density, molecular weight, and boiling point. And all this is presented in easy-to-read, aesthetically pleasing boxes with a dignified non-san-serif font and lots of white space."
Reminder - Alpha doesn't have all data. It won't answer every question. I found it impossible to get some detailed export trade data for Canada. But it's still worth trying.
Posted by Gwen at May 21, 2009 02:48 PM