Answer to everything on the web gets closer

How long would it take an auctioneer to speak 6000 words? What was the weather in Beijing on the day Kevin Rudd was born? How many Americans are named Andrew?

Google and Wikipedia flounder with such questions, but a new search engine called Wolfram Alpha has the tech world abuzz with the promise of more than linking to countless web pages or canvassing a broad topic.

Named after its creator, the British physicist and mathematician Stephen Wolfram, the free site went public at the weekend and will be launched tonight amid high expectations. What separates it from everything else is an ability to interpret complex questions in everyday language and answer those questions by consulting disparate pieces of information.

A Sydney technology author and futurist, Mark Pesce, is among those who have been awaiting the debut. "It could take the way we think of the internet in a new direction," he said. For example, while Google can identify the nearest place for pizza, Wolfram Alpha is designed to tell you where to get the best pizza, Mr Pesce said.

It may be some time before wolframalpha.com tackles culinary debates, but the example reflects its ability to interpret data from unrelated sources. "It's going to have enough natural language guts to be able to look at a whole bunch of articles and judge them," Mr Pesce said.

The fledgling site is biased towards the sciences but its ability to infer conclusions from data is where the potential lies.

An expert in human-computer interaction at the University of Sydney, Professor Judy Kay, said the fact that Wolfram Alpha's sources were vetted by humans put it into a different league from Google or Wikipedia.

"Google searches are really dumb," Dr Kay said. "They're using simple words without knowing what they mean." Wikipedia lists facts but can't do anything with them. He [Dr Wolfram] can answer queries that take combinations of things across his data, which means he can answer more complex sets of questions than Google can."

Mr Pesce says Dr Wolfram can be taken seriously because of his computer program Mathematica, which is capable of symbolic maths. "In engineering circles, he's a bit of a god," Mr Pesce said.

For the record, Wolfram Alpha's answers to the questions posed are: 24 minutes; 21 degrees and clear skies; and 1.06 million.

- © Fairfax NZ News