Further to our blog earlier this week discussing the whys and wherefores of Wolphram Alpha, I was intrigued by this telegraph article and so I spent some time earlier this week experimenting with this ‘computational knowledge engine’.
As with most who’ve been using it, I’ve spent some time entering notable dates, famous names and mathematical equations. I’ve also entered into a twitter dialogue with WA about their entertainment and media coverage – as the search for the BBC returns ‘Development of this topic is under investigation…’ but I’d not tried asking personal questions.
Amusingly, and as covered in the telegraph’s article, WA returns results with personality. Ask WA ‘How are you?’ It’s response is ‘I am doing well, thankyou’. Type in ‘88mph’ and after a little bit of maths, the first result is to recognise that this is the speed Marty Mcfly had to reach in the Delorean in Back to the Future I.
Wolfram Alpha search for "how are you?
A search for ‘the meaning of life’ returns ’42 (according to Douglas Adams)’. A wry smile later and I feel that somehow there is a bit more personality to WA than I’d thought. I vaguely remember Google doing things like this in the early days – certain topics would return results that were unexpected but not necessarily incorrect. It would seem that this is a thing of the past for Google (unless someone can prove me wrong?) but Twitter shows us how brands who adopt/broadcast their personality can enhance their consumer interactions to positive effect, (we are all human, after all) and as Twitter’s search function evolves, the market could find themselves having to adapt to keep up.
I’m sure the personal touch is a reflection that WA are a start-up and they are all a bit geeky ( they have built a new search engine, after all) , but that’s not such a bad thing now is it…?
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