Interesting new research tool

Seems there is a new web based research tool on the way.    It’s described as a graphical tool with a reference library and search engine built in.  It does the calculations and displays the results instead in textual and graphical form if suitable instead of merely displaying links to sites with that data in.

It’s called ‘Wolfram Alpha‘.    It’s due sometime this month.   A tour is available hereif you want a pre-release look.

I see it bringing much needed competition into the search engine market as well as much needed advances on pre-processing and output and thus it looks very interesting for data gathering although I do see three main issues.

1) Because it doesn’t seem to offer alternatives data output could easily be taken as fact when it may be in error.  At least with Google you look at the original sources.
2) Nowhere in the tour did it actually provide a link to a general web site.   If it does then that’s great but why didn’t they show on the tour?
3) It won’t have Google’s knowledge of what is out there yet.  Thus the data output may change over time as more accurate sites are identified.   How will it know what are the more accurate sites?

I’m actually quite impressed with the tour but without the searches of web sites, that Google has built up over years, I see it being a first call tool to do the donkey work with a Google, or similar, search to validate the information.   I can see many bloggers using this tool to gather data together for a post.   Oh, and maybe even Mail journalists will find it eventually and then they can get some facts right.  Of course this could simply be my misunderstanding of a simple tour and all my concerns could be answered.   In which case Google will be relegated to searching for opinions, pictures and general news and this site would be first port of call for facts.

Can’t wait to ask it ‘What is the best way to get Gordo out?’

I suspect the system will give a nice little chart with various methods of assassination and the number of tries and successes of each method with links to details on how each works.

Isn’t technology grand.