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Today we are pleased to share that ChaCha, the #1 free real-time question and answer service, has enhanced the depth, accuracy, and speed of its online and mobile Q&A service by adding computational knowledge from Wolfram|Alpha. The Wolfram|Alpha integration provides ChaCha users with instantly computed facts and answers to questions from over 100 topic areas, such as demographics, definitions, mathematics, geography, and celebrity facts.
ChaCha has historically used people to answer difficult questions to ensure a high-quality answer. We think ChaCha’s decision to incorporate Wolfram|Alpha, the world’s largest curated data repository, made accessible via free-form queries, is a natural extension of ChaCha’s service. Our match up with ChaCha also opens up Wolfram|Alpha to the larger community serviced by SMS mobile text messaging.
“At ChaCha we are constantly looking at ways in which we can better our users’ experience and provide the fastest and most accurate answers to their questions,” said Scott Jones, ChaCha’s CEO. “By partnering with Wolfram|Alpha and tapping into their vast database of computational knowledge, we are enhancing the scope and efficiency of our service.”
On the first day of integration, Wolfram|Alpha answered 32,000 of ChaCha’s incoming questions in a wide range of topics through ChaCha’s SMS service and mobile app. For example, need some quick homework help? Text “what is the inverse of Xlog3(4)?” to 242-242, and in just seconds ChaCha will text you the correct answer:
Or download the ChaCha mobile app and get Wolfram|Alpha-powered responses, such as “How old is Snoop Dogg?”:
We’re looking forward to providing unique and dynamically computed facts to the ChaCha Community!
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You can like us on Facebook, you can tweet with us on Twitter, and now you can follow us on Tumblr!
Now on your Tumblr dashboard, in between animated gifs of cats, fun graphs, and even more pictures of cats, you will find timely data, daily fun facts, and dynamic charts, all computed from Wolfram|Alpha.
Are you already using Wolfram|Alpha to add insight into your Tumblr posts? Be sure to use the official Wolfram|Alpha Tumblr hashtag: #WolframAlpha.
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Our ever-growing family of Wolfram|Alpha-powered iOS apps is gaining two new additions today, including the first in our new Professional Assistant series, as well as another entry in our Wolfram Course Assistant Apps. Launching today for iPod touch, iPad, and iPhone are the Physics I Course Assistant and the Network Admin Professional Assistant App. We designed our Professional Assistant Apps with working professionals in mind. They include content specific to each profession and reference information a professional may look up over the course of a normal day.
The Network Admin Professional Assistant is a useful addition to a network admin’s IT toolbox, whether at home or on the job.
The early development of Wolfram|Alpha showed us that people from diverse domains of knowledge—chemistry, finance, medicine, economics, and many others—were wrestling with many of the same issues: data aggregation and curation, crowd-sourcing, data ontologies, privacy, and more. In 2010, we decided that the leaders of this global data community could benefit from a new forum to share ideas, innovations, and insights into the modern business (and science) of data. And so the Wolfram Data Summit was born, bringing together an elite group of data luminaries for an unprecedented, multidisciplinary conference.
The first annual Data Summit far exceeded our expectations, in the quality of presentations and the intensity of cross-domain debate and discussion. With so many attendees eager to continue this conversation, and so many more data innovators we wanted to invite, we knew we had to make this an annual event.
So we’re pleased to announce that the second annual Wolfram Data Summit will be open to a larger and more diverse group than last year, while maintaining the same high caliber of attendees. We will delve into new topics of general interest—apps and the mobile revolution, social network data, real-time data—while also returning to some of the key themes developed in the first Data Summit and providing more opportunities for open discussion and networking among participants.
More detailed information is available here, including the rapidly filling list of confirmed attendees. Further information, including more details on topics and schedules, will be available soon. The Wolfram Data Summit is an invitation-only event, but interested parties may request an invitation.
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We have been working on making Wolfram|Alpha Widgets more customizable so that it’s easier for bloggers and webmasters to incorporate them in their sites and posts. We’re now pleased to share a few updates with you.
The most exciting new feature is the pre-computed “inline” widget. With these widgets, readers get computational knowledge from Wolfram|Alpha directly, without even clicking a button! As a new twist on the iframe-style widgets, you can now choose to hide or show the inputs as well as hide or show results right on the page as a streamlined addition to your own content.
Here are some examples:
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New York City. Los Angeles. Chicago. Each of these cities is renowned for a diverse array of cultural, entertainment, culinary, and other experiences—as well as for legendary traffic delays. But just how bad do native commuters have it? And if you drive to work in a different city, how does your commute stack up? Wolfram|Alpha can’t yet guide you through the traffic, but it can visualize and compare statistics about traffic and urban transportation in more than 100 US urban areas, with data from the Texas Transportation Institute’s Urban Mobility Report.
Ask Wolfram|Alpha about traffic in NYC, LA, and Chicago, for example, to see how they compare:
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Early on June 7, 2011, the Sun once again showed signs of waking up from the last solar minimum: it unleashed a powerful solar flare. The x-ray emission from this flare can be seen in Wolfram|Alpha:
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Today we are pleased to announce the Wolfram Tides Calculator and Wolfram Fractals Reference Apps for iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad. These are the first two in our series of reference apps that utilize Wolfram|Alpha technology to shed light on some fascinating subjects. Like our series of Wolfram Course Assistant Apps, the Wolfram Reference Apps are each designed with an optimized interface and specialized keyboards to enhance usability for mobile users.
The Wolfram Tides Calculator will become your go-to guide for tide information. Calculate the present tide or today’s high and low tides, do historical computations, or plan your vacation using the tide forecast. The app can automatically detect your current location or provide data from around the world.
For example, with the Tides Calculator you can enter a future date and location to see the tide forecast for a specific date. Here is the prediction for tides in Miami on July 4:
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What do you get when you cross a mountain climber with a mosquito? Nothing—you can’t cross a scalar with a vector!
But what do you get when you cross two vectors? Wolfram|Alpha can tell you. For example:
And in fact, Wolfram|Alpha can give lots of information on vectors. A vector is commonly defined as a quantity with both magnitude and direction and is often represented as an arrow. The direction of the arrow matches the direction of the vector, while the length represents the magnitude of the vector. Wolfram|Alpha can now plot vectors with this arrow representation in 2D and 3D and return many other properties of the vector.
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