Wolfram Alpha's niche continues to elude by Tom Krazit, Relevant Results (May 18)
Wolfram Alpha is a computational search engine that so far appeals mainly to researchers and scientists. Comscore shows that fewer people are visiting it now than a year ago. Wolfram Alpha has some plans to change that.
"The company plans to make over its home page, and will start adding data for more pop-culture-friendly information such as sports, music, health information, and even its own take on local mapping."
Tonight I see that WA has added more tips in a dropdown box on things you might do there - math, weather, bio of a person, logic. There is also a link to Examples by Topic, making it easier to explore the possibilities.
This is a tool people need to spend time with to see how it can help with their questions whether scientific, nutritional, historical, or pop-cultural. But we have been made very lazy by the dead simple keyword web search.
Added May 20 - ResearchBuzz picked out ways to use the features in Wolfram|Alpha Celebrates First Anniversary with Some New Features
Posted by Gwen at May 19, 2010 02:27 AM