Unbelievable

This is huge. Some say calling it "revolutionary" is too much. Many say calling it "evolution" is too little. Yes it may very well be somewhere in between but it's importance is huge.

I am talking about Wolfram|Alpha. It is a web application entirely different. It may be a combination between Wikipedia and Google. But actually is much more than that.

For example you can search normal things like a city or a country and you get different pieces of information like population, capital, etc.
Or you can search different people, actors, former presidents etc and get some information about each of them.

But in the same "search box" you could even write something like "Bucharest to Amsterdam" and it would return the result in km as a straight line between two points, number of flight hours, difference in number of population and different in altitude.

Even more, in the same box you can write X^2 sin(x). It assumes you mean multiplication. It give you a 3D plot, roots, integrals, derivative or series representation.

Or, you can write one or more companies and make a comparison between them using stock information.

The possibilities are almost endless. Sure it still has flaws. When you search for... 'mp3' for example it doesn't know. Actually the music section is not yet completed. In contrast with the movie section.

You can also write different dates see what happened then. Or a keynote. God knows where this stops.

It's the first application I installed a toolbar for. I've put it even on iGoogle AND as a vista gadget (again a first). I'm truly impressed. I've heard a lot about it but it was not until I personally experimented with it when I got blown off.

V

ps. can even search for "the fastest animal"