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The Wolfram|Alpha Team

Participate in the Wolfram|Alpha Project: We’re Better Together

May 31, 2009 —
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It is said that ambition is contagious, and it’s clear that our ambitions for Wolfram|Alpha, one of the most complex intelligence projects ever undertaken, is spreading around the globe. In the two weeks since Wolfram|Alpha first went live, an impressive number of users have asked how they can contribute to the development of this long-term project. We are flattered by your enthusiasm, and want you to join the Wolfram|Alpha Project.

Just take a look at the number of people, just like you, who have found a way to contribute their interests to this project.

2849 registered users have contributed to the Wolfram|Alpha Community. The ideas and feedback generated through conversations on the Community are invaluable tools for Wolfram|Alpha developers.

70,000 feedback submissions have been sent (via the feedback field that can be found on every page of the site), providing the Wolfram|Alpha team with critical input on specific content.

600 users have registered to contribute facts and figures, structured data, and algorithms, methods, and models. Verifiable data contributions are examined by our data curators and, once approved become a part of Wolfram|Alpha.

We encourage you to visit the Wolfram|Alpha Participation page to learn more about these opportunities, as well as how you can test new versions of Wolfram|Alpha before they are released to the public, share your data collection with the world, and become a part of the Wolfram|Alpha Experts Network.

24 Comments

By the way, is there any plans to nadd voice commands. And Again, thanks for this, it is a real sorta community, all my freinds are using it, thanks to moi, and you should leve a huge thanks to jason bradbury who advertised this on his blog at http://www.jasonbradbury.com.

Posted by Henry May 31, 2009 at 11:43 am

I was wondering if there will be a ‘just released’,’updated’ and/or ‘improved’ page somewhere?: it is nice to know what changes are being processed. Every change doesn’t have to be documented of course, but new functionality can be quite hidden is no one tells us!

Posted by sander huisman May 31, 2009 at 1:46 pm

    I second that. Please do.

    Posted by ike9898 June 1, 2009 at 9:34 am

    Yeah, thats a great idea.

    Posted by Iain June 1, 2009 at 2:33 pm

    I apparently third this

    Posted by Steven P Sanderson II June 1, 2009 at 5:40 pm

I would certainly be interested in contributing to
Wolfram|Alpha but I’m a little curious about the
Content Submission Policy. The policy states that
when you contribute to Wolfram|Alpha, “…you are
giving it to Wolfram Alpha LLC … free and clear,
to do with anything and everything we choose.
Your submission has to include a transfer/disclaimer
of all intellectual property rights…”. This is
in strong contrast to the Wolfram Demonstrations
Submissions Policy, which states the author “will
retain ownership of the copyright in the material
you submit” and that Wolfram is merely licensing
the work.

The big question for me is: if I submit Mathematica
code to Wolfram|Alpha, am I subsequently prevented
from publishing that code in an academic paper or
book later?

Posted by Mark McClure May 31, 2009 at 2:14 pm

I volunteered to test new versions, but have heard nothing back from Wolfram… will I get an email confirming if I am on the programme? Many thanks.

Posted by Iain May 31, 2009 at 3:29 pm

One question, it like to serch with simbols, angles, spheres, drawing forms, etc, its this posible with present tecnologie?

Posted by Dedal May 31, 2009 at 4:13 pm

Sorry for the error spelling 😉

Posted by Dedal May 31, 2009 at 4:20 pm

Uniformly positive reviews, too. So sad that Microsoft Bing will soon swipe the reviewers’ attention.

Posted by Vermillion Popp May 31, 2009 at 8:07 pm

About Data Curation:

I think it would be good to make your data curation process more transparent. It would be cool if you guys did like a documentary or something for that specific department. For instance, it could show what the process consisted of and the people that ran those processes. I would be curious to see how this is actually done in real time.

Keep up the awesome work! Because Wolfram Alpha is truly awesome! Thank you for providing us this incredible service!

Wade

Posted by Wade McGriff May 31, 2009 at 10:55 pm

Hey, I tried to find Hava Siegelmann’s “analog shift map” (which may be more powerful than a Turing machine, and which may have something to do with Wolframs cellular machines) by WolframAlpha Search.
It didn’t find anything…

BAD! REALLY BAD!

Why not making a Bing- or even Google-Search instead? I definitely think over it…

Posted by oli June 1, 2009 at 5:42 am

Can bingo do the same?

Posted by AIR June 1, 2009 at 6:33 am

Great concept but still pretty lame. Tried to find out the volume of a standard wheelbarrow in cubic feet or cubic yards and Wolfram couldn’t compute. TO me this is pretty basic and should be common knowledge for any gardener or landscaper. Get your hands dirty!

Posted by jim Bowers June 1, 2009 at 10:34 am

I would have contributed to this project – if it was open source.
Since any contribution will be implemented as closed source and locked from community – I have no desire to spread such a thing.

Posted by EvgenijM June 1, 2009 at 2:26 pm

OMG! WolframAlpha is beyond amazing! i can believe what i just saw in the screencast video. I so amazed that I dont know how to contribute to it right now, but as soon as I think of something, ill let you know! Cheers! Awesome! I ll be all day speechless! THANKS to all the contributors, creators, dreamers, founders, ventures capitalist, or who ever made this posible!

Posted by Joe_mx June 1, 2009 at 2:35 pm

Today im testing bingo but wolframalphas’ results are so satisficer than it. Looks great so good job gentlemans 🙂 i hope wolframaplha will be more improve.

Posted by Ugur Eskici June 1, 2009 at 7:35 pm

i’m NOT impressed. entering in queries such as “atomic weight of rutherfordium” and “spotlight” and “shape of truncated icosahedron” as well as “HeNe Laser Power Supply design” yield a result of “Wolfram Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.”

But, hey, if I need to know the nutritional content of 500g sugar, I know where to go.

Posted by winston smith June 2, 2009 at 9:27 am

Is there any chance that we will see a changelog of new data/features/algorithms added?

Posted by Mark J June 3, 2009 at 6:58 am

I just want to add, my expectations were way higher then this “advanced calculator”.
Wikipedia or whatever is still better..

Will be hard to be in the game with google and firefox right now.

Posted by Chas June 3, 2009 at 9:37 am

I think it is fantastic! But I hope the search engines like google and yahoo will be better soon. Searching on the internet is not always very effective, because often you find not the thing you been looking for. It is good to cooperate but make the search engines better.

Posted by Simon June 4, 2009 at 2:40 pm

Interesting stuff. Will definitely look into this.
Lots of competition though.

Posted by Computer Consultant June 10, 2009 at 2:38 pm

these engine may have a lot of competition but i see this as one of a kind.. really innovative..

Posted by Duncan Thorne December 7, 2009 at 1:29 am

i like it.

Posted by nirma February 1, 2015 at 4:39 pm