What is Wolfram Alpha? Wolfram Alpha, which was released just a few days ago (officially launched May 18, 2009), is an answer-engine developed by Wolfram research. What makes it different from Google and other search-engines is that rather than providing a list of web pages that might contain the answer, Wolfram Alpha instead answers factual queries directly through computing the answer from available data.
Here is one very simple example of what Wolfram Alpha can do.
Searching for more complicated things like "caffeine," "IBM," or "war" give you much more intricate and interesting answers, as Wolfram Alpha compiles all available date on the query to calculate a quantitative solution.
Verdict: The House of Spode recommends that you go check it out. It's definitely cool enough to spend a few minutes on exploring. As to actually utility, that remains to be seen. Sure, if the House of Spode ever needs to do some calculus again, Wolfram Alpha will be the first place we turn to. Actually, we'll probably turn to Wolfram Alpha any time we have any science or economics based question, as the answer is guaranteed to be more concise than anything google or wikipedia can bring up. For other types of information ("what were the causes of the civil war?" or "what is pointillism") we'll stick with the tried and true methods.
