Wolfram Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine
Touted as a threat to Google's search-engine dominance, Wolfram Alpha doesn't warrant the comparison. The site is a different beast altogether, considered a "computational knowledge engine" by British founder Stephen Wolfram. It's more of an answer-engine that relies on its curated knowledge base of data, rather than rounding up websites based on keywords. Boasting north of 10 trillion pieces of data and over 50,000 algorithms, Wolfram instead draws from sources like the U.S. Census reports, the CIA World Factbook and even Wikipedia.
The result is a great aid when looking for hard data, such as populations, time zones, stock quotes or mathematical equations. It stumbles, though, with more subjective matters and will never match the breadth of information on the World Wide Web, no matter how many data sources it collects. But fortunately, launched just days ago, Wolfram expects to continually grow its database and it might become indispensable tool—along with your favorite search engine, of course.
via Thrillist
