Goals

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people-spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

Wolfram|Alpha is an ambitious, long-term intellectual endeavor that we intend will deliver increasing capabilities over the years and decades to come. With a world-class team and participation from top outside experts in countless fields, our goal is to create something that will stand as a major milestone of 21st century intellectual achievement.

Status

That it should be possible to build Wolfram|Alpha as it exists today in the first decade of the 21st century was far from obvious. And yet there is much more to come.

As of now, Wolfram|Alpha contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains. Built with Mathematica-which is itself the result of more than 20 years of development at Wolfram Research-Wolfram|Alpha's core code base now exceeds 5 million lines of symbolic Mathematica code. Running on supercomputer-class compute clusters, Wolfram|Alpha makes extensive use of the latest generation of web and parallel computing technologies, including webMathematica and gridMathematica.

Wolfram|Alpha's knowledge base and capabilities already span a great many domains, and its underlying framework has the power and flexibility to support ready extension to essentially any domain that is based on systematic knowledge. More »

Future

Wolfram|Alpha, as it exists today, is just the beginning. We have both short- and long-term plans to dramatically expand all aspects of Wolfram|Alpha, broadening and deepening our data, our computation, our linguistics, our presentation, and more.

Wolfram|Alpha is built on solid foundations. And as we go forward, we see more and more that can be made computable using the basic paradigms of Wolfram|Alpha-and a faster and faster path for development as we leverage the broad capabilities already in place.

Wolfram|Alpha was made possible in part by the achievements of Mathematica and A New Kind of Science (NKS). In their different ways, both of these point to far-reaching future opportunities for Wolfram|Alpha-whether a radically new kind of programming or the systematic automation of invention and discovery.

Wolfram|Alpha is being introduced first in the form of the wolframalpha.com website. But Wolfram|Alpha is really a technology and a platform that can be used and presented in many different ways. Among short-term plans are developer APIs, professional and corporate versions, custom versions for internal data, connections with other forms of content, and deployment on emerging mobile and other platforms.

History & Background

The quest to make knowledge computable has a long and distinguished history. Indeed, when computers were first imagined, it was almost taken for granted that they would eventually have the kinds of question-answering capabilities that we now begin to see in Wolfram|Alpha.

What has now made Wolfram|Alpha possible today is a somewhat unique set of circumstances-and the singular vision of Stephen Wolfram.

For the first time in history, we have computers that are powerful enough to support the capabilities of Wolfram|Alpha, and we have the web as a broad-based means of delivery. But this technology alone was not enough to make Wolfram|Alpha possible.

What was needed were also two developments that have been driven by Stephen Wolfram over the course of nearly 30 years.

macdonald — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 22:55:17 -0800

Twisten.fm (pronounced TWISS-en-dot-eff-em) - What are you listening to?

Twisten.fm (pronounced TWISS-en-dot-eff-em) is a mashup that crawls Twitter for tweets about music. It then takes those tweets and throws in a play button so that you can listen to the song being talked about. Way cool huh?

macdonald — Sat, 07 Feb 2009 08:17:24 -0800

UK's MoBank - Optimized for Mobile Delivery

MoBank, the UK-based mobile banking and payments said to be launching this month, is creating some buzz on the other side of the Atlantic (stories here, here, and here). Given the pedigree of its two founders, Steve Townsend and Dominic Keen, who blazed many online banking trails at Egg and First Direct, it should provide a glimpse of the future of mobile finance.

The company is establishing a call center in the Isle of Man, run by Steph Gregg, a veteran of Egg, First Direct and Vodafone. Melanie Hunter is head of marketing. David Rubin is head of mcommerce.

The company was named to Red Herring's top-100 global startup list last month (here) along with FinovateStartup alum ClairMail (demo video here).

It appears at launch the service will support bill payment and certain mcommerce activities, such as purchasing movie tickets. An iPhone app is expected at launch. Users will register their credit/debit card(s) with the service. The company plans to expand into mobile banking and money management activities in the future.

The company has raised more than $1 million according to news reports. The company was founded in 2006 and presented at The Essential Web conference in June 2007
(p. 43, here) and had 4 employees at that time.

Here's how the company described themselves 18 months ago:

MoBank is creating the world's first mobile-led online bank. The company believes that, for some sections of the population, small screen devices will become the channel of choice for most banking and payment services. moBank's business model is based on providing a free-to-use basic banking service with paid-for add-on features. Furthermore, moBank's users are enabled to participate in a range of unique, value-generating m-retail activities.

What's innovative: It sounds like a mobile-based account aggregation and bill-pay service, similar to Mint on the iPhone. But it could also contract directly with one or more banks like SmartyPig has (previous coverage). But as ING Direct proved, optimizing on a new delivery channel can pay off with great word of mouth and positive press.

colin.macdonald.com