Making the world's knowledge computable: Wolfram Alpha is online

Wolfram Alpha is an answer-engine developed by Wolfram Research. It is an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, instead of providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer. It was announced in March 2009 by British physicist Stephen Wolfram, and now it is available online.

Users submit queries and computation requests via a text field. Wolfram Alpha then computes answers and relevant visualizations on the fly from a knowledge base of curated, structured data. Alpha thus differs from semantic search engines, which index a large number of answers and then try to match the question to one.

The official video from live webcast about the first attempt to go live with Wolfram Alpha on May 15th:


Watch live video from Wolfram|Alpha on Justin.tv

http://www.wolframalpha.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Wolfram

Where 2.0 Conference 2009: Becoming Location Aware

The past five years have seen significant changes in the geospatial web. Its importance and functionality have matured—it's not just maps anymore! Where 2.0 2009 will take the exploration of "location aware" even further.

Where 2.0 2009 delves into the emerging technologies surrounding the geospatial industry, particularly the way our lives are organized, from finding a restaurant to finding the source of a new millennium plague. Maps are everywhere now, from your desktop to your iPhone to your car to your oil rig, and presented as realistically or as representationally as suits your needs. Thanks to the launch of Geo-Eye and other projects, location information makes devices more useful, and is therefore becoming a given.

The barriers to building location-based online and enterprise apps have been lowered, and the field is crowding with players. Now that consumers—from the home seeker to the environmental scientist—have access to incredible amounts of data and the tools to visualize it, what's considered cutting edge? Where is the next mapping frontier? Is it data collection and visualization? Innerspace? Who are the hackers and early adopters backing? How will big companies jumping in change the rules in mid-game? Is there still a first mover advantage? And again, where is the money?

BTW: Special Tim O'Reilly twitter-only discount by code for O'Reilly Where 2.0 conference. Use code whr09to to get 20% off.

http://en.oreilly.com/where2009/