We hope it’s the former. We use Google everyday and find it an essential tool for our business. But, it’s always good news when someone like the British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram comes along and potentially changes the way the masses think and use the internet. Google managed to do it, so why not Wolfram?

Wolfram Alpha is a computation knowledge engine rather than a typical search engine. The idea is to give users direct answers to their questions rather than send them to other sites where they may find what they are seeking.

It was unveiled in April and has been publicly demonstrated with some people having had a chance to run queries through it. Typically the results it returns are annotated pages of data rather than a simple list of other sites that might help resolve a user’s question.

For example, if you asked what the tallest building was in the world, it would come back with a result for the top 5 tallest building names, their height and number of floors. It can also handle complicated mathematical queries, plot statistics and produce charts of natural events.

It’s currently very American-centric with its results, but that’s to be expected at this early stage. As for ease of use, it seems very intuitive with simple prompts and search tips.

Let’s hope it becomes a successful tool.

www.wolframalpha.com

For the full story, visit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8052798.stm