Wolfram Alpha, a
search tool, which uses sophisticated mathematics to understand and
answer users' questions, is to be launched tonight.
The technology has attracted widespread interest, because of
its aspiration to make better sense of data on the internet than
current web search engines.
Wolfram Alpha differs from Google and similar search engines, by
offering users an
answer to their queries, rather than a list of websites
containing relevant subject matter.
The technology, developed by Stephen Wolfram, founder and CEO of
Wolfram research, uses sophisticated algorithms to build
mathematical models of data taken from expert data sources chosen
by the Wolfram team.
The software interprets users' questions, written in plain
English, and calculates answers from its data models.
In a demo, Wolfram showed how the tool could give the user the
GDP of France both in a written format and by displaying
graphs.
"One of our objectives is to aim to take expert knowledge and
make it easily accessible by anyone," Wolfram said in an interview
earlier this month.
Anyone interested in the technology can tune into a
live
webcast.