Wolfram Bing?

I really like Wolfram Alpha... I use it with my finance students, and have offereed to help them... but to no avail. They seemingly are determined to go down the road without my particular input.

This is an all-too-common situation at organizations of all types... "PLEASE do NOT confuse us with the facts! We'd rather do things by ourselves!"

Yup! Sure...

In the meantime, here's a little of what Michael Arrington had to say today about them...

"The original excitement around Wolfram's launch quickly died down, whereas Bing's continued to accelerate... It helps, of course, to have a $100 million marketing budget and be backed by Microsoft, but Bing actually seems to be striking a chord with regular search consumers.

Maybe that is because Wolfram Alpha is not as approachable as Bing. It is good at "computing answers" to arcane questions, and has some very impressive technology under the hood. But it has a long way to go before it can deliver results that really Wow you. As Paul Carr puts it, Wolfram Alpha is the "technological equivalent of a boring uncle; the method was more impressive than the effect, and so the hairs on the back of my neck remain unstood.""