Wolfram|Alpha - an Atomic look

Search and Computational Engine

Visually Wolfram|Alpha hits every mark it's supposed to, presenting a clean and professional looking interface with an easily accessible search bar with one noticeable difference - in place of a "search" button it has an equals button instead. There's a handy little box to one side with a list of examples to try, and a video for those who still don't get what it's all about.

Once you access the search box, typing in keywords is just the same as you'd expect for any search engine. You can search for mathematical equations, actor names, movies, songs or words, each coming with a series of boxes underneath with a lot of information about the topic you've chosen.

For an incredibly specific and exact search term this works incredibly well, pulling up plenty of information when we searched for "pi" including the value, series representations and examples of how pi can be used. This is presented in an easily digestable way for those unfamiliar with mathematics, but for the professional community this is aimed at we're not sure just how useful it'll be.

Next we tried an element, going with "Uranium", which brought up the periodic table location, element properties (including half life, boiling point, and valency), as well as a box of related links that appears next to the results, a very nice inclusion. This is all information you can find through Google, but it's presented in a neat way that will save buttloads of time for Physics and Chemistry students.

When we tried "Hugh Jackman" it brought up his name, date of birth and place of birth - but all this information is identical to the wikipedia page. It's the same for every single actor in the search engine, giving only three small chunks of info that is next to useless for any real purpose.

Unfortunately once you start moving away from the specific search terms, it becomes a little harder to get the information you want. It has no idea what we were asking when we inserted "Graphics card", "CPU" (bringing up a county in america instead) or "Video Games".

This is pulled up slightly by the more amusing searches you can do with the engine, such as "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood?" - giving  a response of "a woodchuck would chuck all the wood he could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood", very amusing and correct.

Not all is good with the service, so click on to see what isn't.