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The Meaning of Life…
Posted by Dave Mark on May 17, 2009 in Search, Wolfram Alpha
Went to Wolfram Alpha and typed in:
What is the meaning of life?
Here’s the response:
I love geek references! 
– Dave
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Using Wolfram Alpha to Pattern Match Words…
Posted by Dave Mark on May 17, 2009 in Search, Wolfram Alpha
Have you ever wanted a good tool to search the dictionary for a word that fit a specific pattern? There are plenty of tools out there, if you know where to look, and now there’s a new one that is, for me, the easiest to use.
Go to http://wolframalpha.com and type this input:
_pl_m_
Can you guess what the response will be? We’ve asked WA to pattern match that string, where the “_” character stands for a single letter. Here’s what WA did with that input:
As you can see, there’s only one word that fits that pattern: aplomb. Want to widen the search? Try this input:
*pl_m*
The “*” character stands for any number of characters, greater than or equal to zero. Try it…
– Dave
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Wolfram Alpha…
Posted by Dave Mark on May 16, 2009 in Artificial Intelligence, Search
Stephen Wolfram is a lot of things. The common threads would have to be mathematics and genius. Here’s his wikipedia entry. His main claim to fame is Mathematica, a piece of software that can do just about any math computation you can throw at it.
Wolfram’s latest project is Wolfram Alpha, a search engine that combines natural language processing with expert guidance over a limited search domain. In plain english, ask Wolfram Alpha your question and, if it happens to have a good data source on that particular topic, it will present a customizable framework that answers that question.
Wolfram Alpha excels at any question that allows or requires computation. You can type 2+2, that sort of thing, but that’s too easy. Here’s a bit of introductory calculus:
There’s not a better mathematical resource available, and Wolfram Alpha is free.
What else can it do? Lots! For starters, take a look at this short video. Or, go to the site and type in your own queries. For example, try “gdp of france” or “melting point of copper” (quotes not necessary). There is a bit of a learning curve you’ll have to bust your way through but, if Wolfram Alpha knows about your search domain, it becomes an incredible resource.
– Dave
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The Real Value of Twitter: Twitter Search…
Twitter has no advertising. Twitter is free. So why are they valued at more than $200 million?
Search.
It’s the data set that is being created by you and me as we tweet. And it’s especially the links that we tweet. That data is owned by Twitter and it has value to folks who know how to mine it. Here’s a blog post that does a good job of explaining all this. A good read…
– Dave
