I just discovered this new kind of search engine and I do not quite know how useful it is for research work. I am searching for new ways of knowledge representation and am very interested in your opinions and experiences.
Wolfram Alpha will surely survive a long time at least as a math tool.
I use it for plotting and simplifying expressions, but for
searching facts I prefer Google and the Wikipedia.
WA is an example for how a query interface to the Semantic Web
in the future will probably look like. But the knowledge of WA
does not come from the billions of webpages, it was extracted
from specialized databases. In the true Semantic Web
the knowledge will come frome the masses, for example from
annotations embedded in HTML.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microdata_(HTML)
WA tries to understand the underlying concept of the user's query,
and it gives feedback what it understood. That is something
I'm missing on all other search engines.
For example on business webpages. Most company webservers host
a local search engine, but all of them are stupid. I think they
should all have a Wolfram Alpha module for business
related questions.
"Where are the premises of Wolfram Alpha?"
"Who is the boss of Wolfram Alpha?"
I tried other queries related with WA as a business which did not
yield satisfactory results, but it had probably only to do
with the lack of appropriate concepts.
A similar online program is START developed by Boris Katz.
http://start.csail.mit.edu/
Peter Norvig provided Google's position on the Semantic Web.
The main (rather pessimistic) arguments are:
- People can't even write correct HTML
- Missing standards
- Spam
http://news.cnet.com/2100-1025_3-6095705.html
In the meantime, Google went some steps into the direction toward
the Semantic Web:the Knowledge Graph. Here as well the knowledge
was extracted from specialized databases, e.g. the Wikipedia
and Freebase.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21428676.400-why-google-will-soon-answer-your-questions-directly.html
http://googleblog.blogspot.de/2012/05/introducing-knowledge-graph-things-not.html
Regards,
Joachim
I'm not sure about the uptake. Wolfram does have a lot of traction as math resource it seems, but I'm not sure about Wolfram Alpha. It might interest you that currently we're carrying out a worldwide survey to find out what research workflows people are using. That will perhaps give us some information on who uses it, at least in academia.
We will post preliminary results, though the survey runs through Feb 2016. More information is here:
https://101innovations.wordpress.com/
We also shared our database of 475+ research workflow tools here:
http://bit.ly/innoscholcomm-list
I feel it is very useful and convenient. There is also premium version where you can pay and unlock some features. I would say it is sustainable.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Computer Science
- Computer Communications (Networks)
- Internet