The name of the newest online excitement sounds like a scientific contraption created by a misunderstood genius who died in the 1800′s. Their tagline though, “Computational Knowledge Engine” is way cool.

The service itself is being lauded as the next ground-breaking internet milestone.

While of course I can see how it might end up being ground-breaking (after all, “computational knowledge” does have that zest), I cannot see anything mildly fascinating in the project in its current form. It’s basically a Texas Instrument that goes way beyond the AP Math class use.

I have been playing with it for the past few days, and like I already tweeted, WolframAlpha, aside its scientific uses, is basically an online, live-time MS Encarta 95.

Do you remember that? Type in a word, a city, a date, and you’ll get straight up facts on your input, some graphics, followed by a tiny paragraph and some references. And its list of topics is just as narrow.

Well, minus all the calculations that I would never really need.

The likeness to Encarta is not a bad thing, Encarta was my favorite thing in the world for a very long time. I used to browse it for fun, pre the internet days.

For the purpose of this test, I divided up my playing on Wolfram into two parts, part dumb, part semi-smart.

Some of the things I played with on Wolfram:

Around 85% of my queries got the same answer, which is: Wolfram|Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.

Including: Nintendo, Super Mario, Mitsubishi Lancer, Carpal Tunnel.

That’s really what I love about Google, always recommending, even if it has no idea what I’m talking about.

Yup, it’s definitely snazzy. And having all this power out there, simply phrased and for free for everyone to use is absolutely brilliant. But it’s not a search engine. It’s just a big calculator.

Do you have any experiences with Wolfram Alpha? Any questions that provided interesting answers?

Honestly, I’m disappointed. I guess it will help people kick ass when doing their homeworks and desk jobs, but I can’t find anything interesting to do with it. Maybe I’m not using it like I’m supposed to, but I don’t see much Web 2.0 “Computation” going around.

But maybe this post has come too soon. I guess I’ll re-review it in a year or so, hoping that my initial experience with it is only just that. Initial.

I woke up to a dozen “Ma2222″s this morning, as well as a dog barking, and a bell. What the hell. I get up and look out the window, and lo and behold, there’s at least 50 sheep in the two empty plots of land across from our house.

What I find really freaky is HOW they manage to get to such parts of town. Did these sheep travel through Culture Street? University Street? Jordan Street? Commodore Street? Gardens Street? How did they end up in Shmeisani? It couldn’t have been a nice safe trip, they’re all main streets, with tons of cars all day long!

My first attempts at cupcake decoration have proved to be less than modest. But was definitely a fun start :)

(shot from a movie adaptation of one of my favorite vampire authors, Anne Rice)

Some physicists actually published an academic paper that demonstrates, “by virtue of geometric progression”, that vampires could not exist.

Damn it, I’ve been hoping they do my entire life! I’ve been obsessed with all sort of fantastical creatures since I was a child, the only reason I don’t talk much about vampires is because I had consumed every single sort of worthy vampire literature by the time I was 13, giving me a good ten years to get over them.

The two physicists, who I hope did this academic paper as an inside joke, conducted a thought experiment: Assume that the first vampire appeared on January 1, 1600. At that time, according to data available at the U.S. Census website, the global population was 536,870,911. Efthimiou and Gandhi calculate that, once the Nosferatu feeding frenzy began, the entire human race would have been wiped out by June 1602 (thus forever changing the course of history by preventing the invention of the slide rule eighteen years later).

Interesting.

Full article at io9.

The old-fashioned way. Moose’s laptop has a serious heating problem, it dies when it heats up, and now that it’s summer, its death rate every night is quite annoying.

So he devised a brilliantly simple solution (another reason why I love him), with a wet folded sheet of Kleenex stuck to the lower part of the laptop. And… it actually works. It hasn’t shut down on me yet, and by this time on any other day, it would have shut down twice.

So yeah, tip of the day, boo the bad fans away with a wet tissue. Ha, smarter than Gateway.