"Wolfram Alpha" Search Engine unveild

(image found on cnet news)
They say if you can build a better mouse trap you can have the world at your doorstep. The same is true with a better search engine. In today's time where time is so precious and correct information is key in so many decisions, the world is always on the look out for a new and more productive search engine. Well there is something on the horizon now, Stephen Wolfram, the genius mathematician, physicist and software entrepreneur is at it again.

He has created a new kind of search engine, something we are all accustomed to seeing in the science fictions shows like star trek. A search engine which searches for information based on factual data. This new kind of search dubbed, "Wolfram Alpha" uses a "Computational Knowledge Engine", will do just that. The way it works is it breaks down a question into english then parses them into a query which its answers by searching a series of libraries it has within. This is a great idea that has long been held in sci-fi movies but lacking the correct algorithm to properly do it.

In a recent blog entry this is what Wolfram had to say:
"All one needs to be able to do is to take questions people ask in natural language, and represent them in a precise form that fits into the computations one can do," Wolfram said in a recent blog post. "I'm happy to say that with a mixture of many clever algorithms and heuristics, lots of linguistic discovery and linguistic curation, and what probably amount to some serious theoretical breakthroughs, we're actually managing to make it work...It's going to be a website: www.wolframalpha.com. With one simple input field that gives access to a huge system, with trillions of pieces of curated data and millions of lines of algorithms," he added.

Well the creator of Mathematica has done just that by using Mathematica and NKS (a new kind of science) he has created a search engine that will answer your factual query by searching libraries in such a manor. The only bad thing is that it can only answer factual queries. If a person asked it how good of a job someone was doing it could not answer that since that is based off opinion.

The search engine is scheduled to be released to the public in May 2009. Some people do wonder if Google will try to incorporate some of this technologies idea into its search for query too. I guess it could be an interesting option if they can get the algorithm right for the search.

Wolfram Alpha Search Engine: www.wolframalpha.com

A bit of interested info on Mr Wolfram:
Stephen Wolfram has a track record of scientific breakthroughs and some controversy. He received his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Caltech in 1979 when he was 20 and has focused most of his career on probing complex systems. In 1988 he launched Mathematica, powerful computational software that has become the gold standard in its field. In 2002, Wolfram produced a 1,280-page tome, A New Kind of Science, based on a decade of exploration in cellular automata and complex systems. The book stirred up a lot of debate in scientific circles. Legendary physicist Freeman Dyson described the tome as "a case of style over substance."

Wolfram Alpha Search Engine Will Directly Answer Your Questions (Daily Tech)
Stephen Wolfram and the techno-dianetics of Google-ology (arstechnica)
Wolfram Alpha: Next major search breakthrough? (cnet news)