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Bing.com is Microsoft’s new internet search engine. I will be interested to know what strengths you find it has over Google, if any.
WolframAlpha is intriguing. Not really a search engine, it’s billed on its front page as a “computational knowledge engine.” Wired has an article on it here.
Type “population Alabama Georgia Mississippi” in the input box, and you get the relevant info. If I put in “Huntsville to Gulf Shores” I find that they are 313 miles apart. When I input “weather Cullman,” I learn that 32 minutes ago (as I type this) in Cullman it was 59 degrees, overcast, with wind at 6 mph. The highest temp on this date in Cullman was in 1985 (99 degrees), and the lowest was in 1990 (52 degrees). And more.
Input “Danny, Hank” and you find that about 1 in 929 people alive in the U.S. are named Danny (or 0.11%) and that about 1 in 50,350 are named Hank (or 0.002%). Which just goes to show that the state Senate has been way overrepresented by Hanks at 2 in 35, or 5.714%, which is 2857 times the rate in the population at large.
The page provides a number of very interesting examples, but for most of us it will take some effort to find what WolframAlpha can do that is beyond interesting and that is particularly useful.
Legislative Dispatch
Purple Dot Connection
2010 Big List
2010 Senate Elections
2010 House Elections
Press Releases
Got to WolframAlpha and type “math software”
It responds with…
Input interpretation:
What’s the world’s most powerful computational software?
Result:
Wolfram Mathematica
—
Not at all self serving!
I prefer Matlab by Mathworks BTW.
Live Ma…err Bing Maps features bird’s eye views for select areas in Alabama. It’s their answer to Google Maps Street View.