Readwrite web just published their "First impression" on an amazing search cum computational engine - WolframAlpha. In comparison to google, it is different in the sense that "Instead of searching the web for info, Alpha is built around a vast repository of curated data from public and licensed sources. Alpha then organizes and computes this knowledge with the help of sophisticated Natural Language Processing algorithms"
In a demo given to RWW, stephen wolfram searched for "internet users in europe". According to RWW, Alpha presented the results in an amazingly useful manner. It not only gave the number of users but also provided various plots & data for every country in europe.
My take : I haven't had the privilege of using alpha, but from the reviews it sure looks interesting. A vast knowledgebase which allows users to search it using simple launguage. However, it needs to be seen how alpha supports NLP. Many search engines and data retrieval engines have tried NLP in the past without much success. If alpha is able to get it right, then it is sure to go a long way [till google attempts to buy it ;-) ]
As it is built on Mathematica, the initial tests must be encouraging. However, computational processing speed can be a concern. Overall, the sneak preview (provided by RWW) looks interesting. Will definitely keep a tab on this one.
