A British physicist has demonstrated a search tool designed to give direct answers to questions rather than merely a list of relevant sites. It’s largely science-based but has some info on more popular culture.

The site, Wolfram Alpha, should be ready for public use in a couple of weeks. It’s key selling point is that it gives facts rather than just search results. Rather than search the Web for relevant pages, it aims to process queries to see what the user actually needs to know, then process data sources (some of which are not otherwise available online) and calculate the answer.

The site is the work of Stephen Wolfram, best known for developing a theory that the universe runs on logical systems which resemble a computer program. He’s billing the search tool as being the automated equivalent of consulting a human expert, and notes that it’s based around “trillions of pieces of curated data.”

The tool makes use of publicly available data in other ways. For example, when a query involves a phrase that has several different cultural references, such as ‘For Whom The Bell Tolls’ (a film, book and several songs), it will consult Wikipedia to find which is the most popular reference.

Whether the site will really fill a gap left by Google is open to question, and the chances are that it may only really have an advantage on very technical queries where the relevant data isn’t easy to find. For example, a BBC report on the tool refers to a user asking “who was the president of Brazil in 1923?” and getting the response “Artur da Silva Bernardes.”

That looks impressive until you realize typing the same query into Google also gives the correct answer in a single click: it appears within the brief description of the first site in the results list, a Wikipedia page listing world leaders in 1923.

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Entry was posted on Thursday, April 30th, 2009 at 12:58 pm under Google, Internet, Science and technology, Technology.

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