Wolfram Alpha: Not Quite the Alpha Dog, Mike O'Leary, Information Today via Allbusiness (Sept 2009)
The bloom is off this rose. Wolfram Alpha is not yet the computational engine it and others would like to be. Too much hoopla that raised expectations that the engine can't meet.
Mike O'Leary identifies what it does well (such as company financials, makret data, population, weather, definitions) and what it doesn't - most everything else.
WA does not do words - this is a numbers place. Even so, O'Leary "found numerous mistakes, often because the information was out-of-date".
Also WA does not show source for the facts and numbers returned.
O'Leary prefers Ask.com for finding facts - those capsules of content that Ask puts at the top of the search results page and used to call "Smart Anwsers".
Posted by Gwen at November 9, 2009 07:49 PM