Wolfram Alpha First Impressions

As Public Enemy so succinctly put it (now many years ago), 'don't believe the hype'. This is particularly apt for the 'computational knowledge engine', Wolfram Alpha, that went live today. Wolfram Alpha, sounds like the name for a space station from the Star Trek Universe (a good start to its life). Touted for the last few days/weeks as a potential competitor to Google (which it is not), even a 'Google Killer' (which it is really not), my first impression is that this is a work in progress, that has the potential to develop into something useful. It is less Google and more Ask Jeeves on steroids (for those who remember or even still use the esoteric search butler). One of the first things that occurred to me as I was typing a query was that I don't really access information like this anymore, by actually going to the website; I tend to use either the search box toolbar on my browser or the Dashboard widgets that come with OS X - I was pleased to see that both are available in the downloads section of the site.

I tried a few simple searches: the name of my hometown (returned the population, a map and the local time), 'the number of people in England' (which it seems to have got wrong, equating England with the UK and returning a figure of 60.8 million - sorry, Scotland, ROI and Wales), 'normal range of WBC' (I am a doctor so this is the kind of thing that unfortunately first pops into my head - the engine answered correctly), and 'the square root of 20736' (which everyone, including Wolfram Alpha knows is 144).

I am going to download the widget and try and play around with it in the coming weeks. Initial impressions are that this is not likely to become my first port of call for information any time soon.