(2009-03-08) Wolfram Alpha

Stephen Wolfram has a new big plan, with Wolfram Alpha. Wolfram Alpha is a system for computing the answers to questions. To accomplish this it uses built-in models of fields of knowledge, complete with data and algorithms, that represent real-world knowledge. For example, it contains formal models of much of what we know about science - massive amounts of data about various physical laws and properties, as well as data about the physical world. Based on this you can ask it scientific questions and it can compute the answers for you. Even if it has not been programmed explicity to answer each question you might ask it. But science is just one of the domains it knows about - it also knows about technology, geography, weather, cooking, business, travel, people, music, and more. AI, Semantic Web.