• Wolfram Alpha is a free online service scheduled that was released in May 2009. Inventor and British scientist Stephen Wolfram, has referred to his Wolfram Alpha as a "computational knowledge engine".PC World: Is Wolfram Alpha a Google Killer (May 4, 2009)

• Fast Facts

  1. Launched in May 2009
  2. Invented by British scientist Stephen Wolfram
  3. A free online service
  4. Wolfram previously invented Mathematica, a computational software program used in technical computing
  5. Information queries include science, technology, geography, weather, cooking, business, travel, people, musicTechCrunch: Wolfram Alpha Computes Answers To Factual Questions. This Is Going To Be Big (March 8, 2009)
  6. Program is based on a natural language interfaceTechCrunch: Wolfram Alpha Computes Answers To Factual Questions. This Is Going To Be Big (March 8, 2009)
  7. Uses cellular automata, an idea developed in Wolfram's book A New Kind of ScienceTechCrunch: Wolfram Alpha Computes Answers To Factual Questions. This Is Going To Be Big (March 8, 2009)
  8. System responses are based on factual, answerable questions as opposed to open-ended philosophical queriesTechCrunch: Wolfram Alpha Computes Answers To Factual Questions. This Is Going To Be Big (March 8, 2009)
  9. The interface will be as simple as Google's interfaceWolfram.com: Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming! (March 5, 2009)
  10. Accesses billions of pages of online textWolfram.com: Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming! (March 5, 2009)
  11. Methods and models are explicitly implemented as algorithmsWolfram.com: Wolfram|Alpha Is Coming! (March 5, 2009)

• Four Pillars of Wolfram Alpha Service

  • Data Curation: Access to a massive amount of data that has collected from various sourcesNY Times: The Veil Is Lifted From Wolfram Alpha (April 28, 2009)
  • Internal algorithm and computation: Utilizes a computational engine built on top of MathematicaNY Times: The Veil Is Lifted From Wolfram Alpha (April 28, 2009)
  • Linguistic understanding: A online service system which interprets conversational queriesNY Times: The Veil Is Lifted From Wolfram Alpha (April 28, 2009)
  • Automated presentation: Uses technology to display query results in "interesting ways"NY Times: The Veil Is Lifted From Wolfram Alpha (April 28, 2009)

• How Does It Work?

  Wolfram was designed as a program which can break down a set of factual questions a user might ask in the course of a verbal conversation, such as "What country is Timbukto in?", "How many protons are in a hydrogen atom?", "What is the average rainfall in Seattle?" by using a built in model of fields of real world knowledgeTechCrunch: Wolfram Alpha Computes Answers To Factual Questions. This Is Going To Be Big (March 8, 2009). Trillions of pieces of raw data about numerous fields of knowledge were manually entered or automatically pulled in to build Wolfram Alpha's database, starting with Wolfram's existing projects, Mathematica and NKS. Models and algorithms that do computations with the data were added in and constructed in a modular fashion on top of the Mathematica engine. The project is said to work by first parsing the question, then accessing the data to compute a new answer.TechCrunch: Wolfram Alpha Computes Answers To Factual Questions. This Is Going To Be Big (March 8, 2009)

• Natural Language Processing

  Wolfram Alpha uses "natural language processing algorithms" to find the answers to users' questions, allowing users to phrase queries as if they were asking a question in a conversation.PC World: Is Wolfram Alpha a Google Killer (May 4, 2009)

• Previews and Reviews

  • "It's hard to judge a product from a demo, but by the looks of it, Wolfram Alpha is impressive."—NY TimesNY Times: The Veil Is Lifted From Wolfram Alpha (April 28, 2009)

  • "...because it is so different from traditional search engines, it will definitely not be a "Google killer""—ReadWriteWeb RWW: Wolfram|Alpha: Our First Impressions (April 25, 2009)

• Related Mahalo Pages

  • About.com
  • DBpedia
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  • Mahalo
  • Natural Language Processing
  • Semantic Web
  • Wikipedia

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