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In today’s blog post, we will use some of the new features of the Wolfram Language, such as language processing, geometric regions, map-making capabilities, and deploying forms to analyze and visualize the distribution of beer breweries and whiskey distilleries in the US. In particular, we want to answer the core question: for which fraction of the US is the nearest brewery further away than the nearest distillery?
Disclaimer: you may read, carry out, and modify inputs in this blog post independent of your age. Hands-on taste tests might require a certain minimal legal age (check your countries’ and states’ laws).
We start by importing two images from Wikipedia to set the theme; later we will use them on maps. More »
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A new partnership between Wolfram Research and the Raspberry Pi Foundation makes the Wolfram Language and Mathematica—the underlying technologies for Wolfram|Alpha—available on the Raspbian OS and they will soon be bundled as part of the standard system software for every Raspberry Pi computer. More »
Each summer a group of interns arrives at Wolfram Research to work on a host of exciting projects that not only prepare them for their future careers, but also give them the opportunity to make some great contributions to Wolfram technologies. One such contribution this year was the “Fun Curves” project for Wolfram|Alpha that took drawings of famous cartoon characters and turned them into mathematical equations. More »
We’re huge library fans here at Wolfram|Alpha. We proudly count a number of former librarians and library science experts among our ranks, and we rely heavily on contacts at public and academic libraries for expert assistance in locating sources and answering difficult questions across a wide range of knowledge areas. So we hope that, like us, you’ve been celebrating National Friends of Libraries Week (October 21–27) the past few days. More »
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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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Recently, CNNMoney published stories highlighting the “20 most profitable companies” and those considered to be the “20 biggest money losers”. Companies such as Exxon Mobil, AT&T, Apple, and Verizon were ranked by their 2010 profits, with each of the 20 profitable companies bringing in well over a billion dollars.
Using the information provided by both articles, there are many opportunities to gain more data on each of the companies from Wolfram|Alpha. For example, Exxon Mobil topped the list of most profitable companies, but has it always been profitable? Entering “Exxon earnings” into Wolfram|Alpha produces data and graphs documenting its earnings history.
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So you have more Facebook friends than anyone else on campus, the quad is a place where everyone knows your name, and you just happened to ace your business and marketing courses—it sounds like you are the perfect fit for a Wolfram|Alpha marketing internship. We’ve launched this challenging new internship program for talented and ambitious students just like you. It’s an opportunity for you to engage in immediate, real-world marketing experiences, testing out cutting-edge and traditional strategies and methods.
The semester-long internship program will be conducted on college campuses across the United States. The program integrates academic theory and scenario-based practice that puts you in the position of making mid-level business decisions, analyzing marketing campaign results, and reflecting on your campaigns. (Your professors will love this!) More »
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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. More »
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The Wolfram|Alpha Community Forum has moved to the Wolfram Community. Sign up today for interesting discussions about Wolfram|Alpha and more!
We are so excited about the response to the Wolfram|Alpha Community site in the past week. Nearly 2,000 people have shared questions, ideas, and inputs since it launched on Monday, and many more are finding this forum to be a great place to communicate with others who are exploring Wolfram|Alpha. More »
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The Wolfram|Alpha Community Forum has moved to the Wolfram Community. Sign up today for interesting discussions about Wolfram|Alpha and more!
Today we are officially launching Wolfram|Alpha to the world at large. It has been a very successful weekend of testing and learning. We’re flattered by the positive reception thus far, and we are dedicated to furthering the project with the help of you, our community of users.
To that end we are officially launching the Wolfram|Alpha Community, which allows you to submit questions, ideas, and favorite inputs.
We already have a few static forms to contribute things such as facts, figures, and structured data or algorithms, methods, and models. The Community serves to supplement these types of feedback with a more free-form discussion among all Wolfram|Alpha users.
In the Community, you can vote for items that you feel deserve further attention. We support threaded commenting, unique user profiles, and social sharing via email, Twitter, and Facebook. The Community also allows you to “save” items of interest so that you can track their progress over time.
This crowd-sourced model will help our team here gain a better understanding of what features, improvements, and possibilities the Community thinks are most interesting and worthwhile.
There has been a tremendous amount of useful feedback thus far, and much of that information is being used to make immediate improvements in near real time.
But it is also our hope that the Wolfram|Alpha Community will help make the feedback process more direct and have more impact. The Community will provide us with a mechanism to report back to you with changes, new results and capabilities, and overall improvements, thereby closing the loop and making the entire system more transparent.
Of course, we won’t be able to respond to every submission. But we’ll do our very best to respond to all relevant and substantive items. Additionally, it is our hope that members of the Community will likewise take the time to assist their peers, pointing them in the right direction and offering valuable advice and context.
Thanks again for all of your support and please join us in the Community!