As Wolfram Alpha Comes Close to Release: All You Need to Know About Wolfram|Alpha

Wolfram—the magical search engine that will channel all kinds of groovy data to give you fatabulous answers is planned for release this month.

Stephen Wolfram, creator of Mathematica, gave a webcast about Wolfram|Alpha at Harvard this week (why not check out Bobbie Johnson of the Guardian’s piece, First look: Wolfram Alpha shows itself in public)?

There’s also Stephen Wolfram discusses Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine, which is around 2 hours long….. so if you’re on a train journey………

The blurb says:

There’s been great anticipation around Stephen Wolfram’s ambitious project to create a comprehensive “computational knowledge engine.”

The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University will host a sneak preview of the Wolfram|Alpha system including a discussion of its underlying technology and implications.

Participants will include Wolfram|Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram and Professor of Law Jonathan Zittrain.

Stephen Wolfram is the creator of Mathematica, the author of A New Kind of Science, and now the creator of Wolfram|Alpha. He is the founder and CEO of Wolfram Research.

It’s clearly going to be a useful tool, rather than a search engine — as Wolfram says, “we’re trying to compute things — and I can imagine using it. But I can’t see it replacing Google for all day use, and any “Google killer” talk seems way over the top”.

Also,  in an email sent to me yesterday from Wolfram|Alpha are a couple of bonus bits:

Want to know what truly sets Wolfram|Alpha apart? Theodore Gray shares “The Secret behind the Computational Engine in Wolfram|Alpha” in today’s Wolfram|Alpha Blog post, now available at:

http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2009/05/01/the-secret-behind-the-computational-engine-in-wolframalpha

Also new in the Wolfram|Alpha Blog is a look behind the scenes at one of our many pre-launch projects with a fun video we’re calling “Rack ‘n’ Roll.” We hope you’ll check it out here:

http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2009/04/30/rack-n-roll

If that’s not enough…..how about the video below?

So – do you think that this will be a Google challenger, if not a killer?

Do you think that you’re more likely to use Wolfram|Alpha than Google once it’s unleashed?

Let me know in the comments below 🙂