WolframAlpha

Just a few days ago a new type of internet search engine released called WolframAlpha. After trying the site for about one hour, I have concluded that it has the potential to become as popular as Google. This is a different type of search engine. It really is a knowledge base search engine. Instead of giving you a list of web sites, it gives you answers.

WolframAlpha is named after it's creator, Stephen Wolfram. He is most famous for developing the math and science software known as Mathmatica. Stephen is a very smart guy. He was born in Great Britain. He obtained a PhD in physics by the age of 20. His idea for this search engine is to provide the ultimate knowledge base.

Here are some examples that I tried. I typed in my birthdate. WolframAlpha informs me that I was born on a Thursday, 14627 days ago, during a full moon, sunrise 5:59 am, sunset 8:18 pm, the same day that Wes Anderson (film director) was born and that May 1 is International Labor Day. The computer is able to detect the general area of the computer connection and bases the data on that location. In my case, it lists the location as Salem instead of Portland. You can add the location of your birth to make the results accurate.

WolframAlpha is a very sophisticated calculator. It can basically do any math calculation you'd care to try. It has all kinds of chemistry data. Type in a substance such as glucose and it will give you a picture of the chemical structure, along with all the other chemical information.

Transportation information such as airports, distances between cities, and calculating gas mileage are easily done.

The astronomy data is more than you'd care to know. Type in a specific planet or moon and date and you will find out where the planet was located in space on that day. If you type in the moon, you get the current location, phase, relation to the earth and sun graphic, etc. I typed in Sputnik 2. I was given the launch date, current speed and a map of its current orbital location.

Unit conversions are easily calculated. Currency conversions are also available.

Geography information is very detailed. Type in a city or country to find all kinds of instant information. Who is the president of Argentina or what is the population of Mexico City? These are the type of questions made for WolframAlpha to provide an instant answer.

There are several medical calculations available, such as body mass index, body surface area, heart disease risk, etc. Want to know how many calories you burned on your last run? Just type in your age, sex, running distance and speed, height and weight, and it will be calculated. You can find out health statistics such as life expectancy per country, etc.

One of the coolest features is a built in nutritional calculator. I typed in Loma Linda Linkette and it gave me instant nutrition facts in the same label form as you would read on the side of the can. It is quite easy to calculate most any food nutrition facts. Just type in the food and you'll find out how many calories, fat, sugar, fiber, vitamins, minerals, etc. that it contains.

Type in any word for a definition. You can also use it as a thesaurus.

Any search result can be downloaded as a pdf file. Click on the sources link and it will show you the sources used to provide your answer.

You can install WolframAlpha as another data field on your browser, just like you would for a Google search, so that it is available easily. I also have it installed on my iGoogle page.

Check out WolframAlpha. It's a lot of fun to play with and very useful as well. Here is a quick review of the site done by MacWorld.