Steve Erbach
erbachs at gmail.com
Fri May 15 23:44:18 CDT 2009
Dear Group, I watched the live launch webcast of Wolfram|Alpha tonight from about 7:30-10:30 CDT. It is online now, though the official launch date is Monday: www.wolframalpha.com One of the first queries I typed in was: "circumference of the milky way in cm". Wolfram|Alpha gave me the answer, whereas a Google search just gave me a list of Milky Way web sites. That's the biggest difference: Google gives you places to look for the answer to your question while Wolfram|Alpha gives you the answer plus a lot of interesting associated information. For example, not only did I get the circumference of the Milky Way in centimeters, I got the time it would take light to travel that distance. Very, very cool. I've been typing in queries for about three hours. There are things it doesn't quite get; but you can get started by looking at the categorized examples. I found that Wolfram|Alpha will not only solve quadratic equations but it will factor them, too. Algebra was the topic on another email discussion and, voilà! Wolfram|Alpha, she factors ze equations! Amazing stuff. Regards, Steve Erbach Neenah, WI http://www.NeenahPolitics.com http://www.TheTownCrank.com