Wolfram Alpha is a search engine hoping to see inception in May of this year. The reason people are calling it a Google-killer is because of its interface… with Google (and other engines) you basically type in search terms and are returned a huge list of probably rel event documents. With Wolfram Alpha, you ask questions like
- What is the location of Timbuktu?
- How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?
- What was the average rainfall in Boston last year?
- What is the 307th digit of Pi?
- Where is the ISS?
- When was GOOG worth more than $300?
and it gives you an answer. Of course it doesn’t use a huge database of hashed questions and answers, nor does it return probable results; it uses sophisticated NLC (natural language computing) to return answers to specific types of questions. Awesome!
