I suppose you have heard of Alpha Wolfram the new "Knowledge computational engine" of Wolfram (makers of Mathematica) which opens the day of my birthday, May 18. The idea is that they have created a series of databases of scientific and social information, and using some natural language processing and Mathematica as a computational engine capable not only provide useful and accurate scientific information, but, above all, do calculations with it and even present it in graphic form (A review of Techcrunch and above here to watch this demo ). Because
interface (minimalist) the immediate comparison was with with Google (hand of Technology review here) but for me, and I think that every time coincides press, the comparison is stupid now, are functions different (information search vs web search) and even when using Google to search for pure information, have different capabilities, Google offers a large database data (but not necessarily complete or accurate) and Wolfram offers a database much smaller, but with large capacities of calculation and verified information. In any case, I do not know about you, but I every time I use Google to search for information put "wiki" and look in wikipedia. So, at least for me Wolfram Alpha competes with Wikipedia.
One of the problems of Wolfram Alpha, is that their databases are limited (right now only 10TB). It can be good at what he does, but to maintain and enhance a database like this, being a relatively small company, can be very complicated. However, you may end up benefiting Wolfram of Linked Data ( here further explanation). If Tim Berners-Lee is successful in promoting the opening of databases, may not be very complicated for Wolfram go directly to them, and become a great front-end of the linked data, with all the processing power and graphical abstract you have Mathematica. The presentation of Tim Berners-Lee at TED 2009 will not necessarily add more information, but it's nice to see him excited about his new idea. And the presentation Hans Rosling at TED 2006 shows the power of linked data it processed. Wolfram Mathematica by Alpha may offer these opportunities to many other types of information.
Google, although in its current form, as commented, Wolfram does not compete directly, they may end up doing in the coming months. However, the way they do is completely different. Wolfram Mathematica uses his experience is his strength to perform computations with data in databases that they create (this is his weak point). Google is very good looking on websites and doing natural language processing, so that by the end of this month will draw Google Squared a new type of search they read lots of web pages, extract information relevant to the topic, and organized as the spreadsheet. Funny how each exploits its strong point. In reality, both could make a symbiotic one using the databases of the other and the other front-end. However, at least for now and from what I read, Google is planning another way in which Google will use the spreadsheet capabilities to display information with graphs, and I guess that will interface to display the information from Google Squared. The graphics help a lot, but the alpha calculation capabilities go far beyond simple graphics, and on the other hand, as explained in the video Squared, the information is filled with multiple sites with what is quite likely to inconsistent data sets, if not wrong. Again, we return to the fundamental difference between seeking pure information (as when I look at wikipedia) or searching websites (where I do not trust or half of what I read.
In any case, I have really wanted to try Wolfram Alpha next week and see how it evolves as time passes. We'll see if it can live up to expectations, or stay in another bluff as Powerset .
0 comments:
Post a Comment