Have you Checked Out Wolfram Alpha?

May 18, 2009 · 10 comments

: Image by bootload via Flickr

I wanted to drop a quick note about something cool I came across today. I’m trying to get on a productivity kick because I haven’t been reading as much as I would like… So today instead of socializing during lunch I vowed to eat my sandwich and chips at the desk reading from my reader.

It paid dividends.

I ran across a story about Wolfram Alpha and checked out the site. After getting the gist of it, I did some initial queries on Humana (the company I work for) and then Humana, Cigna, Aetna (competitor companies) and the results that were returned were nothing short of amazing.

I’m talking about latest stock price, market cap, revenues, employees, outstanding shares, price to earnings ratios, and the kitchen sink. All lined up next to one another… If I was in school and needing to perform this kind of detailed comparitive analysis I would need to go to each company’s site for their annual report or query the ticker names in Yahoo finance in three separate tabs… and then copy and paste the information into some kind of table somewhere.

Which would suck.

Now its all done with the ease of typing in a search query. To be clear though, Wolfram Alpha is a knowledge engine and not a search engine. That distinguishment is made on the site itself. With that in mind, there are some detractors out there comparing it to Google, but I think that comparison misses the point. Wolfram Alpha doesn’t appear to be trying to out Google the Google by coming up with a better search algorithm. Instead, it provides answers to questions. This is very different from searching for pages with information.

Wolfram Alpha returns the information itself in the query results.

At this point in time, not all queries return results but that will more than likely change over time. For now, I think that it is an awesome new service and am really glad to have come across it during my new lunch time routine.

Wolfram Alpha Launches Right Now! (blippitt.com)
LIVE: The Wolfram Alpha Non-Launch (mashable.com)

Tricia

Thanks — because I needed something else to distract me with.
Tricia

Thanks — because I needed something else to distract me with.
Chris Hall

I’m here to help and keep you up to speed on the hotness, big sis.
Chris Hall

I’m here to help and keep you up to speed on the hotness, big sis.
john miller

chris,
just checked out the Wolfram Alpha site…i like it…it’s now bookmarked.
john miller

chris,
just checked out the Wolfram Alpha site…i like it…it’s now bookmarked.
Chris Hall

Awesome, John. Glad you like it. Pretty cool take on search, if you ask me.
Chris Hall

Awesome, John. Glad you like it. Pretty cool take on search, if you ask me.
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