If you’ve got a question that you need a quick answer to these days, the first port of call tends to be a search engine such as Google, Ask and Yahoo, or even an online encyclopaedia, say Wikipedia. But is this monopoly about to be gatecrashed by a newcomer?
The current online buzz surrounds the first glimpse of Wolfram Alpha, a uniquely formatted site that looks to answer questions directly. This system will compute what has been asked and provide a formatted answer from its unique computational knowledge engine. This intelligent computer system bypasses all of the traditional keyword associated results to provide a single finite answer.
The new face of online search?
The real question though is whether this can really topple Google’s dominance as the go-to source for so many people? We will of course have to wait and see as Wolfram Alpha is still under wraps with a launch date later in May. In truth though, old habits do tend to die hard, so I’m reasonably convinced the major search engines and their clients won’t be overly concerned by this brand new information resource.
To find out more about Wolfram Alpha, their other innovations – including Mathematica – and the creator Stephen Wolfram, check out their blog here.
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