Wolfram/Alpha Launches: Can It Break Out Of Niche-Ville?
Wolfram/Alpha has launched, but after a few searches it’s an open question whether the search engine can break out of a narrow niche for select users. For many searches Wolfram/Alpha just “isn’t sure what to do with your input.”
“Wolfram|Alpha is the first step in an ambitious, long-term project to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable by anyone. You enter your question or calculation, and Wolfram|Alpha uses its built-in algorithms and growing collection of data to compute the answer. Based on a new kind of knowledge-based computing..”
Overall, Wolfram/Alpha reads like an encyclopedia. It’s handy at times, but the big question is whether the search engine can break out of niche-ville. Sure, geeks like the presentation and it Wolfram/Alpha can be handy for deep dives, but the average person will want some sort of results every time. In that regard, Wolfram/Alpha may be a disappointment.
And a lot of searches just don’t work well. A search on Wilmington Blue Rocks, a minor league team I used to cover way back when, gives me nothing. But if I want history on Wilmington or Delaware or the color Blue I’m set.
Photo by Wolfram/Alpha.
Scott Quitter on May 19th, 2009 6:15 am
I tried two searches:
1) What is consciousness?
2) Where does consciousness reside?
On the first one, it gave me a definition. On the second one, it explained that it “isn’t sure what to do with your input.”
Still, I think over time, this will be a search engine to watch. They seem to be attempting to break new ground…which always excites me.
Jaclyn on May 19th, 2009 8:10 am
I agree that this search engine will one day be an online enclyopedia. Just imagine all of the new data that probably get’s input in there on a daily basis, and it just hasn’t reached certain stages yet to be able to answer such questions as above. It has got to be hard to try and imagine every little question and search that just one person would do in order to load the software accordingly.
Scott Quitter on May 19th, 2009 8:45 am
Jaclyn,
I was thinking the same thing. I think they are trying to work out the algorithms so they can interpret the input and respond intelligently, almost like a human would think. If this is true, that’s a really TALL order. I hope they succeed!
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