Comments on: Wolfram Alpha: Helpful or Hyped?

By: Garbage

Garbage — Tue, 26 May 2009 20:43:39 +0000

DogSheepBeta gave me answers that were closer to what I was looking for.

By: JamDirect

JamDirect — Tue, 19 May 2009 21:17:41 +0000

A couple useful search queries: “swine flu” and “life the universe and everything”

By: Craig Buckler

Craig Buckler — Tue, 19 May 2009 13:10:29 +0000

@Dan Grossman

the company said it handled 23 million queries during the prelaunch

The *full* launch was supposed to be on Friday and it went down almost immediately. The company then changed the launch date to Monday. The pre-launch was going on far longer than two days too.

I’m not saying these things aren’t difficult, but these major launches are seemingly doomed to fail. It doesn’t make the company look good.

To call handling 23 million queries an incompetent launch is incompetent commentary.

That’s your opinion, which I respect. My statement about the launch appearing a little incompetent is *my* opinion. You may agree or disagree, but that’s the beauty of free speech.

By: Stevie D

Stevie D — Tue, 19 May 2009 11:34:09 +0000

Stormrider Says:

http://www05.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=population+of+wales

Yeah, I’ve figured that one out. There is a small village near Sheffield called Wales. It doesn’t recognise the existence of the countries of Wales or Scotland – along with a heck of a lot else.

Given the paucity of data available, the unreliability of what is returned and the inexplicable interpretations of natural language, I can’t see Wolfram|Alpha taking the world by storm any time soon.

And that’s before you get on to the absolutely appalling interface, code and output format. Back to the drawing board.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=back+to+the+drawing+board
“Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input”

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 19 May 2009 02:58:28 +0000

HEAR of it today, SEE it tomorrow, FORGET it next week!

By: Dan Grossman

Dan Grossman — Tue, 19 May 2009 00:13:51 +0000

“I’m always amazed by these companies who run massive marketing campaigns only to totally underestimate the server load on day 1. At best, it looks a little incompetent.”

Quite an insult considering it’s based on pure assumption. CNN talked about Wolfram Alpha today — the company said it handled 23 million queries during the prelaunch. And Wolfram Alpha queries are *much*, *much* more computationally heavy than a search engine query. To call handling 23 million queries an incompetent launch is incompetent commentary.

I’m becoming more and more inclined to ignore your posts, Craig. Remember that you’re supposed to be a professional blogger.

By: Scott Petrovic

Scott Petrovic — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:30:04 +0000

This just seems like a really slow version of wikipedia. Great idea, but it is way too slow and not to where it needs to be yet.

By: Rob_D

Rob_D — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:47:19 +0000

I think it’s pretty cool. My ISP is having mail problems again – happens about once a month for what seemed like hours at a time so I wanted to check the duration of acceptable downtime. So, to WA I went and entered this query:

1 year*0.01% (http://www67.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=1%2Byear*0.01%25)

A computational knowledge engine it is.

By: rozner

rozner — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:59:17 +0000

Yeah I was playing around with just entering things like that and it does give some interesting results. Although I thought the whole point was for it to be able to parse natural language and answer questions… Reminds of working with prolog. I think it has potential but it still needs a lot of improvement.

By: BigBong

BigBong — Mon, 18 May 2009 09:35:50 +0000

Its pretty brilliant in certain ways. I believe they achieve their objective. It is still very glitchy but I have to complement for their brilliant research. It has lot of potential in comparing computational data. I not sure if they themselves know about that. Alot of space to improve and monetize it.