Wolfram Alpha update

As the release date for Wolfram Alpha draws closer, I thought it would be a good idea to update my earlier post.

Yesterday Stephen Wolfram offered a sneak preview at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Two interesting articles are also available, one by Frederic Lardinois on a demonstration given by Wolfram on April 25 and the other a response to the Berkman Center preview by Larry Dignan.

And the question everyone seem to be asking is, will this replace Google? Well…

Is Wolfram/Alpha a Google killer? Probably not. Wolfram/Alpha’s approach, however, is notable and it’s easy to picture it being used in the enterprise. Wolfram’s demonstration could be summed up as an intersection between analytics and generic Web search. Wolfram/Alpha gets you an answer instead of pointers to potential answers. “It tries to tell us useful information based on what it can compute,” said Wolfram. ”The goal is to provide expert level access to anyone at anytime.”