The date is 17th May 2009, the time is a few minutes to midnight and I am online wanting to be one of the first few to log onto the launched www.wolframalpha.com
I doze off for a few minutes and when I finally get online a few thousand visitors worldwide had already logged on and made a few queries!
From the cursory look of it, WolframAlpha goes one step beyond the search engines we know of into the real of knowledge engines. For example, instead of the lines of hyperlinks you get when you use your favourite search engine, WolframAlpha gives you precise answers.
My first query to WolframAlpha was “Who is the President of Ghana?” I not only got the precise answer, John Atta Mills, I also got information on the start date of his tenure of office, official designation plus some other relevant information. I did not need to open multiple tabs to pick pieces of information here and there. Everything had been compiled on one page as if someone had anticipated my question and and actually prepared a sheet with answers.
Aparently some of the web pages indexed by my favourite search engine are not yet aware of the transition in Ghana's politics.
The next thing I did in the question bar was to type the equation: 2x + 5 = 13 and instantly I was informed the value of X was 4. Amazing! Plus, there was graph showing how WolframAlpha arrived at the answer
The third time I tried something interesting, I used a popular search engine to look for the distance between the moon and the earth. I got varying answers as wide as twenty thousand miles. I used WolframAlpha and what I got was surprising. All those varying answers, you get in your search engine are indeed correct (sometimes!).
Why sometimes correct? "Because the distance from the earth to the moon is not constant: it changes by as much as a mile a minute. Wolfram|Alpha not only tells you the conventionally quoted average distance, but also the actual distance right now..." Plus, how much time it will take light to travel from the moon to the earth at the present.
So far Wolfram|Alpha has succeeded in taking my time and interest as I explore the numerous possibilities. And I am sure it will be a real tool as it gets more and more popular and the guys behind it get more and more feedback.
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Thursday, March 12, 2009
When the keyboard becomes history
I have had to teach people on a number of occasions how to type on the 'rather awkward' computer keyboard. Each time, I take some time to explain that this 'rather awkward' arrangement actually makes typing much easier and faster than a 'properly arranged' keyboard.
However, as we move towards 5th generation computers and are already familiar with touch pads, I doubt if the role and usage of keyboards as we know them today will remain the same.
Now a prediction; gradually the touch pad will get more incorporated into personal computers to the extent that users will actually just write using the light pen (or any common device such as a pencil) and then have this converted to any font of choice on the screen onto say a word processing document.
As time goes on, people will get more used to that and making the keyboard somewhat an obsolete 'accessory' used only by techies and conservationists. Gradually, later generations will only see keyboards in a museum or on google images or wikipedia or ..... anywhere else except on their laptops or desktops.
But.....
What will happen to the non alphanumeric keys such as SHIFT, ALT, ESC etc, the Function keys (F1 - F12) and all such?
There will be a small key pad somewhere on the computer or attached optionally to the computer for use as and when needed.
But will this last very long? I doubt how long it will given the trend that voice recognition is also on the rise and is certainly going to be of more convenience. But the challenges of this are yet to be sorted out especially with accent. For example if a computer will respond properly and print out "Water" when it is mentioned by an American, the same computer might just print out "What a" when the same word is mentioned by a Ghanaian.
Its a long interesting road to go. And I look forward to it.
What you think?
However, as we move towards 5th generation computers and are already familiar with touch pads, I doubt if the role and usage of keyboards as we know them today will remain the same.
Now a prediction; gradually the touch pad will get more incorporated into personal computers to the extent that users will actually just write using the light pen (or any common device such as a pencil) and then have this converted to any font of choice on the screen onto say a word processing document.
As time goes on, people will get more used to that and making the keyboard somewhat an obsolete 'accessory' used only by techies and conservationists. Gradually, later generations will only see keyboards in a museum or on google images or wikipedia or ..... anywhere else except on their laptops or desktops.
But.....
What will happen to the non alphanumeric keys such as SHIFT, ALT, ESC etc, the Function keys (F1 - F12) and all such?
There will be a small key pad somewhere on the computer or attached optionally to the computer for use as and when needed.
But will this last very long? I doubt how long it will given the trend that voice recognition is also on the rise and is certainly going to be of more convenience. But the challenges of this are yet to be sorted out especially with accent. For example if a computer will respond properly and print out "Water" when it is mentioned by an American, the same computer might just print out "What a" when the same word is mentioned by a Ghanaian.
Its a long interesting road to go. And I look forward to it.
What you think?
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