So whats the answer?

Recent news released today reveals that there is a new Web tool which could be as important to us all as Google.  What could be more important than Google - Wolfram Alpha.  This is the brainchild of British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram.

Rather than search for matching information in response to your question or list of key words in the way that a search engine like Google does, this little magic wand analyses your question, draws on the vast knowledge base of the Web and associated data stores and computes the answer.  Note that it computes the answer not a long list of relevant and maybe-relevant articles through which you have to trawl and sift in order to work out your own answer.

The new tool uses a technique known as natural language processing to return answers.  This allows users to ask questions of the tool using normal, spoken language rather than specific search terms.  This has long been the ultimate aim of many computer scientist. 

However its not all plain sailing.  Already, experts are arguing over the way in which people enter their questions and the tendancy to leave out the non important words which form properly constructed sentances.  Stephen Wolfram doesnt seem to concerned about this and refers to these missing words as 'fluff'.  But it can make the difference in determining the correct answer.

For example, if you wanted to know when PoliticianA visited PoliticianB but asked 'politicianA visit politicianB' you might get a list of dates which also include when PoliticianB visited PoliticianA - which is not the answer to the question you wanted to ask but were not careful enough to type in.

I guess the clues in the name 'Alpha' and over time with the help of millions of people and billions of searches, this technology will mature but whether its the right answer to the questions we seek is another matter.