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11 Nov 2009 22:29

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Tech: Dear Wolfram Alpha: Working with Bing is actually smart

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  • Wolfram Alpha is a smart idea that has been neutered by bad decision-making – charging an embarrassingly-high price for their iPhone app, treating copyright like something they can control. Well, now they have something to grasp onto: Bing. While their searches aren’t all that useful by themselves (too insular), combined with a decent general-purpose search engine, it starts to feel like a killer app. This specific execution is why people got excited about the product at launch. Not the $50 iPhone app. source

10 Nov 2009 11:05

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Tech: Wolfram Alpha doesn’t understand copyright, either

  • Copyright, as Wolfram seems not to understand, is a bargain between creators and their public. As an *incentive* to create, the former are given a time-limited monopoly by governments. Note that it is *not* a reward for having created: it is an incentive to create again.
  • ComputerWorld U.K. columnist Glyn Moody • Noting the should’ve-been-game-changing service’s overbearing copyright policy, which states that “failure to properly attribute results from Wolfram Alpha is not only a violation of [its license terms], but may also constitute academic plagiarism or a violation of copyright law.” So in other words, Wolfram Alpha is worse than the Associated Press. AND is has a laughably expensive iPhone app, too. It’s like the service was created by a bunch of scientists who don’t understand how the real world works! • source

18 Oct 2009 21:29

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Tech: Dear Wolfram Alpha: Nobody’s gonna buy your iPhone app

  • $1.99 the amount we could see ourselves paying for a Wolfram Alpha iPhone app
  • $49.99 the amount Wolfram Alpha is charging for their iPhone app; umm, what? source

15 Jun 2009 00:50

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Tech: Google SEEMS calm about MS’ Bing, but are they really freaking out?

  • The New York Post sez yes. The Post, in their usual overwrought style, claimed that Google was so surprised that Bing was actually good that co-founder Sergey Brin is actually taking a desperate hands-on approach to making improvements to the engine. Yeah. Sure.
  • But is it just marketing? Despite Bing’s solid search, really, it may just have killer marketing. Larry Dignan of ZDNet argues that Google is just search when sites like Bing and Wolfram|Alpha are actively offering more than that. A new branding approach may be key for Google. source

24 May 2009 19:33

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Tech: Lots of people are trying Wolfram Alpha right now

  • 100 million answers served in just 11 days. Whoa. source

17 May 2009 13:00

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Tech: What tech journalists think of this Wolfram|Alpha thang

  • one For a beta, PC World gives it high marks: “All things aside, Wolfram Alpha is performing nicely, considering this is a test weekend.”
  • two TechCrunch is much harder on the product: “Even when Wolfram does have an answer, it is not always the best one.”
  • three So is ComputerWorld: “I tested Wolfram|Alpha about five days before it was set to launch, and it didn’t take much to find its limits.”

15 May 2009 20:59

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Tech: OK, we’re officially excited about Wolfram Alpha

This pretty brilliant computational search engine is in the midst of getting launched tonight. The hype is blinding. source