[mike777]

"Goals
Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries."


http://www28.wolfram...a.com/faqs.html

[helene_t]

Great idea, actually I have thought about the same but decided I was too lazy/stupid to implement it. Btw I have used their mathematics resources for years, didn't realize they were into other things as well.

The features they offer already are quite cute. Type in "largest fish" and you are told it takes light 60 nanosecs to travel the length of a whale shark.

Btw, "a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries" has been invented before, by many religions and communist governments. Let's hope it will prove useful this time

[blackshoe]

Years ago, David Gerrold wrote a science fiction novel, When H.AR.L.I.E. Was One. H.A.R.L.I.E was a self-aware computer (Human Analog Robot with Life Input Equivalents) connected to virtually every source of data imaginable. The purpose in building him was to have a machine that could answer any question. When it turned out that he couldn't do that, the company decided to shut him down. H.A.R.L.I.E., over a weekend, designed, and printed in the offices of all the major company executives, specifications for the machine that could answer any questions. Of course, he designed it in such a way that only he, H.A.R.L.I.E., could talk to it. He called this machine the Graphic Omniscient Device. Clearly, H.A.R.L..I.E. had a sense of humor. Heh. The company had hired a child psychologist to help "raise" H.A.R.L.I.E. The man's name was David. H.A.R.L.I.E. took to calling himself "H.A.R.L.I.E. Davidson". It was a good story, but there was no sequel. Who knows how things turned out?

[barmar]

I read that when I was a teenager, I really liked it. Although there was no sequel, there was a revised version, with Version 2.0 added to the title.

Another one from a few years later was The Adolescence of P1. P1 was a self-aware computer program derived from an adaptive program for playing tic-tac-toe.

[blackshoe]

Yeah, I remember P1. H.A.R.L.I.E. was better, though.

[Rain]

I think it's hard to remember and type this name. It's so routine to type www.google.com now, but unless they shorten this to WA, who's going to use it?

Also, it doesn't know bridge answers! =P

I think it'll end up being bought by google/yahoo/msn.

[barmar]

Has anyone tried Bing yet? I just tried their driving directions page, and it looks about as good as google maps. But it has a nice feature to check report traffic conditions that google doesn't have.