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0 pointstokenadult17y ago0 comments

If Alpha lives up to its hype

That is the tough issue here. The hype has been immense.

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4 comments · 1 top-level

jamroom17y ago· 3 in thread

Agreed - it's been immense, and (unfortunately) I think I can predict what will happen upon launch - someone will find a witty "search" or question that WA should have no problem with (or they think it should have no problem with), and WA will spit out some nonsensical answer, and it will get posted to every site under the headline "Wolfram Alpha can't even answer this simple question, how is it going to take on Google?". It will become a joke, and only those who understand it will continue to use it, while the rest will dismiss it because they likely won't understand it. I'm hopeful, but not too hopeful.

chris1117y ago

You are kind of comparing apples and oranges here. I don't think Alpha would be really hurt if the majority of people found it useless.

All Wolfram has to do is to allow developers access to the API. I'm just not totally sure how he will allow access to the program right now.

Google's search engine isn't incredibly useful to the person who doesn't like using it. But Alpha has the possibility possibility of being useful to people who wouldn't even visit the site.

At the very minimum, it has a lot of potential for search aggregation. Let's say that someone wanted to create a site that aggregated travel information. It sounds like a developer could basically create mini-travel guides on demand for specific regions or towns. So you would quickly get info on crime, cost, food, weather, and tourist attractions. Or you could actually just rank travel places based on certain criteria. So if I wanted to find a cheap place that currently had warm weather, beaches, and low crime, I might be able to get a lot of useful information. I wouldn't need to use Alpha myself, somebody would have just had to develop a site to aggregate the results.

I have no idea what it's killer use will be, but this has the potential to be very useful to developers. So once developers start taking advantage of it, I believe it would be successful.

jamroom17y ago

I agree - it's for sure an apples to oranges comparison, but unfortunately I have a feeling that most users (and main stream media outlets) will gloss that over and pronounce it the "non" Google killer. I also agree with you that the potential lies in something we may not be able to envision at this point, but if developers get turned on to the platform it might be really successful.

andrewljohnson17y ago

I don't think WA is going to get Cuiled.

Cuil results really were nonsense, and still are today. It wasn't some over-hyped bad publicity that was Cuil's downfall -it was their crappy software.

If WA is good, people will use it, and the talking heads won't have any say in the matter.

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