Technology Review - Published By MIT
Advertisement

TR Editors' blog

Insights, opinions, and our editors' analysis of the latest in emerging technologies.

Blog Topics

Recent Posts

Recent Comments

  • fiberman : How amusing. A contributor to the WSJ suggests eating your fellow man. Well, isn't that just what...
  • kstauff : I believe the deficit left by the Bush administration for fiscal '08 was around $500 billion. ...
  • kstauff : You're right, I overestimated the number of democrats in both houses, although I believe that the...
  • kstauff : Are you as angry at Roosevelt, Truman, Kennedy, Johnson and Clinton for the wars they prosecuted?...
  • kstauff : The Obama administration told us it would be 8% without the stimulus.  You tell me if he and his...
  • ... : Just to make it apparent, there's already a Chromium browser which uses the Chrome codebase for...
  • Adalast : people keep throwing around the "New Deal" and saying that it was horrible and didn't help our...
  • ... : All of these careful studies and delays in taking up a form of energy that is far superior to the...
  • Gary... :    While 10% unemployment is unacceptable, to say the stimulus did not help the employment...
  • skingw : History also tells us: too many human beings for too little resources --> great wars (killing a...
Advertisement
Friday, October 16, 2009

Wolfram Alpha's Second Act

Following a sharp drop in interest, the "computational knowledge engine" pins hopes on API--and homework.
By David Talbot

The summer months saw a sharp drop in user interest in Wolfram Alpha, the online "computational knowledge engine" that calculates everything from planetary distances to cholesterol levels and generates (from the topics it knows) customized charts and graphics not available from general search engines. In the peak days after the May 15 launch, traffic soared to around 2.8 million daily visitors--but then hit a trough of 200,000 in July, according to the company. But now, with traffic now drifting back toward the 300,000 mark, the site is pinning its hopes partly on a new application programming interface (API) to leverage the online tool in websites, online publishing, desktop applications and mobile devices. An iPhone app will be one of the early examples.

It will be interesting to see how third-parties leverage the depth of Wolfram Alpha's knowledge in math, science, geography, and engineering beyond the simple search-engine-like interface that now confronts users. Right now, the engine has a ways to go to meet the goal of its brainchild, the physicist Stephen Wolfram, to "make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone."

The rebound toward 300,000 visitors may reflect a back-to-school bump, with students seeing the engine as a great tool for doing their math and science homework, according to Schoeller Porter, who heads up Wolfram's API program. (Indeed, the engine is throwing a homework day event next week to promote further such use.) "We had an enormous launch with a huge amount of interest and a lot of traffic. The traffic fell off, and we fully expected that; it was a nice relaxation for us, and it let us fix code and put in new features," he told me this morning. "It followed a kind of---I won't say overhyped--but a well-hyped launch." Wolfram Alpha is built on Mathematica--Stephen Wolfram's comprehensive repository of mathematical and scientific formulae--and fed by datasets curated by Wolfram Research.

Comments

  • Looking the gift horse in the mouth
    I have a great personal and potential professional interest in Wolfram Alpha, but I have a significant amount of uncertainty about the commercial terms of the yet to be determined business model that will eventually be settled on.  I'm sure many others share this concern, and it will limit adoption of Wolfram Alpha and its API until clarified.
    Rate this comment: 12345

    gaoptimize
    10/19/2009
    Posts:2
    Avg Rating:
    4/5
Advertisement

Log In

Forgot your password?     Register »
Advertisement
Technology Review November/December 2009

Current Issue

Natural Gas Changes the Energy Map
The United States has vast supplies of this cleaner fossil fuel. But how should we use it?
•  Subscribe
Save 36%
•  Table of Contents
•  MIT News
» Gift Subscription
» Digital Subscription
» Reprints, Back Issues
» Subscribe
» Table of Contents
» MIT News

More Technology News from Forbes

Advertisement
MIT Massachusetts Institute of Technology © 2009 Technology Review. All Rights Reserved.