Live, from Champaign!

Wolfram|Alpha just went live for the very first time, running all clusters.

This first run at testing Wolfram|Alpha in the real world is off to an auspicious start, although not surprisingly, we’re still working on some kinks, especially around logging.
While we’re still in the early stages of this long-term project, it is really gratifying to finally have the opportunity to invite you to participate in this project with us.

We are very grateful for the outpouring of support that we have received over the past two months. And for the enthusiastic interest that was shown this evening, especially in the last few minutes.
We got off to a late start, but so far, so good. We’ll stay up for as along as it makes sense to test the system with external access and gather the data we need. Then we’ll take Wolfram|Alpha offline for a while. We’ll continue testing through the weekend, opening access on occasion.

For those of you trying out the system for the first time, welcome! To anyone waiting in line due to capacity limits, thanks for your patience. We really appreciate it.
You can continue to watch us in action over on justin.tv.

I enjoyed comparing enrollment numbers for universities and language comparisons. I was also amused at typing “vous et nul autre” and having it tell me that it doesn’t yet understand French. And yet…it knew this was French… :)
Very much enjoyed being a part of the turn-up as an engaged viewer and chatter on JTV Friday evening. Much thanks to Mr. Wolfram for all his work and that of all the people working with him. A massive undertaking which is much appreciated. The dedication and love of what you are doing in the development of the next stage of how we use the Internet is inspiring. I am hoping Mr. Wolfram in the not to distant future will be writing a book about this!
This is a very interesting project! However, I’ve noticed some issues when routing browser requests through a Squid cache (Squid 2.5 in one case and Squid 2.6 in another).
For example, when going through the Squid cache:
http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=forecast+champaign%2C+illinois does NOT show graphics nor most of the data
http://www2.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=forecast+champaign%2C+illinois does show graphics and full data
Perhaps the configuration is different between these two addresses.
[...] While we’re still in the early stages of this long-term project, it is really gratifying to finally have the opportunity to invite you to participate in this project with us. Continue reading… [...]

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