Wolfram alpha to launch tonight 7pm CDT – what it might mean for PR

By on May 15th, 2009 In Social Media

Is it a competitor to Google?  Is it a search engine?

Stephen Wolfram has devised a new type of system that will be launched today at 7 pm CDT – click here for details.   Whereas Google helps you find web pages on any variety of topics, and Wikipedia is a resource for online, updatable topic explanations, the Wolfram alpha is designed to help researchers answer semantic questions, such as “Who was the shortest president in the United States?” 

Wolfram Alpha “doesn’t merely look up the answers like Google does, it computes them using at least some level of domain understanding and reasoning, plus vast amounts of data about the topic being asked about.”  [from an article by Nova Spivak that explains it further].  It has reasoning and calculating abilities, vs. lookup.   It’s the difference between sending someone off to the library to fetch all the articles you need vs. asking one person who combines the best intellectual talent of Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Madame Curie, and Stephen Hawking all in one.   Streamlined information to you, faster. 

Wolfram and his team are opening up the system to the world tonight.  If the launch goes well, it promises additional research capabilities for public relations professionals looking for factual answers on the go.  

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