Wolfram|Alpha – A knowledge computational engine

I’ve been following all the hype and discussions around Wolfram|Alpha. In few hours it’ll go live. I’ve been lucky enough to have played with it and I like it a lot. I can totally see its potential. I believe that the direction Stephen Wolfram and his team are taking to be the absolute right one (I am sure they haven’t been waiting for me to say that :-).

For those who have been monitoring my blog over the last couple of years, they’ll know that I have made a conscious decision to direct my career towards semantic computing, knowledge representation and reasoning. I am trying hard within Microsoft to apply many of the ideas and approaches that Wolfram|Alpha is now delivering. We are far away from what they have achieved and they seem to be executing really nicely. Even Google is recognizing that this is the right direction (Sergey Birn’s letter to the troops, Google squared).

Checkout the “Introducing Wolfram|Alpha” video. Very cool.