A new web service named WolframAlpha went live today. The live launch of the self-titled computational knowledge engine had some hiccups but it seems to be up and running now. Somewhere between Wikipedia and Google, with cool charts and visualizations, I can tell I’ll be using this a lot. WolframAlpha leans heavily to scientific data and facts which is mostly why you’d choose to use this but dates, music, and colour are all innovations in search. You can learn more in the faq.

While it’s no Google-killer yet, it’s just in it’s infancy, it does some things today that make Google’s search look useless. It’s also a different look on things and that’s refreshing.

Just one example of how a query might differ;
Google Search
vs.
WolframAlpha