Wolfram Alpha search to launch today

For kicks I tried the following questions:

What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?

and

How old are you?

The answers were interesting and entertaining. Many of my questions didn't get good answers (what is your favorite color) but that's understandable. If I keep my questions to mathematical ones (26! – 26 factorial or sin of 45 degrees) the answers are unambiguous.

I've been feeding it all sorts of different questions and the results are mixed. However, I can see a usefulness of this new search engine especially if my questions are mathematical or scientfic in nature.

The pages look terrible on IE 6.

Anyone can really start their own engine at extremecorporate.com

Why would anyone use IE6?

IE 6 is dead ... who cares.

Dude! You're still using IE6? Serves you right!!
http://www.getfirefox.com

Question is: Will someone make an iPhone App for this site?

Jim, every thing looks terrible on IE6 because it's a technology disaster. Upgrade to IE7 or 8 already so developers can stop wasting time supporting obsolete and buggy browsers.

Why are you still using IE6? You're now officially 2 versions behind. The problem lies with your browser, not the site.

I submitted "number of times bush lied" and it said it wasn't sure what to do with the input.

Everything looks bad on IE6

After going tru some usage examples from WolframAlpha website. I tested if it could handle multiple syntax, Intuitively i entered "b + b =4, a + a =2, a + b =?" and to my delight, it understood the problem and answered correctly that a + b = 3.

Some other interesting things you can ask WolframAlpha are:

"Why is the sky blue?"

"Where am i?"

"Number of horns on a unicorn?"

"What is the difference between sun and moon" (I posted this same question to Google.com and the 1st link from the google results gave a WRONG answer!)

"How are you today?"

I was looking forward to seeing what Alpha could do. I'm sorry to say, I'm not impressed – it's pretty weak.

Get used to the following words:
"Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input"

Try "web browser usage statistics". You get that line, and a suggestion that you may want to search "web browser". Click okay, and it says it's software.

Not exactly what I was looking for.

Demographic data for Denver was 5 years old. Ballpark figure at best.

"How many US Senators are there?" Returns: "Development of this topic is under investigation..."

Like I said, weak. So far, not much more than an out-of-date database, not any fancy algorithms doing... anything.

Still, it's only JUST released. It's going to need to grow in capability, and FAST, to make it anything more than a flash in the pan. What the publicity for it has already shown, is that there is an interest in doing more than Google.

That may be the point. Perhaps Alpha is trying to get noticed just enough for a Google to swoop in and buy them up. That's not a remedy for an engine's success, though it might be for the owners.

The thing works like crap with simple searches. Not for mainstream use.

it didn't understand Star Trek 1966 and only spit out the current release for a query of Star Trek Movie

It spit out facts about Hudson, Ohio but could answer population trend / time / famous people questions... there seems to be one location format and that is all it can handle.

It can give you distance vand flight time between any two cities, but no links to dig deeper than single format of results.

Uhhh...if the pages look terrible on IE, try using a real browser instead of sucking MicroSlop's Kool-Aid...or do you work for MicroSlop?? I'll bet Wolfram doesn't use Windoze...or other MS prods for that matter.

Agreed with you Jim, the page looked chaotic..

Wolfram Alpha's fantastic! I love the feature that allows you to compare chemical elements and whatnot. Very helpful indeed.

site looks horrible on explorer 6. a lot of the searches did not find any results.

Oh My I am loving this web-browser. This is a solid example of a personalization of web. So many people on the web everyone has a different need in the web. This browser is especially for the people trying to solve a equation or looking for a formula that contains sine or cosine or tan or some other mathematics formula. The way information is displayed is very helpful if u know what u are looking for. Well overall this is NO COMPETITION with Google, we have to just look at this in a different perspective.