

Wolfram Alpha API (Google Cache) - byrneseyeview
http://74.125.95.132/search?q=cache:1yOPEKSvoeUJ:www.wolframalpha.com/WolframAlphaAPI.pdf+site:http://www.wolframalpha.com/&cd=20&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

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kneath
This is awesome. I haven't been terribly optimistic about Wolfram Alpha (I
feel like it's a huge nerdgasm that regular people just won't get) -- but an
API makes it _really_ interesting to me. My mind is swimming with ideas of
apps people could build given something like Wolfram's engine. I don't know
why I assumed there wouldn't be an API, but I'm sure glad I was wrong.

~~~
byrneseyeview
It's feeling more and more like a natural language interface for Mathematica.
Which, I think, means that an API is a way to get around the layer of Alpha
they've wrapped around Mathematica.

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vicaya
<http://www.wolframalpha.com/WolframAlphaAPI.pdf>

works and more up to date (updated on May 14, 2009)

Looks pretty good.

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jefffoster
It'll be most interesting if you can supply your own knowledge
representations. Imagine being able to tie up your own information against the
huge repository of data that (appears!) to be present in Wolfram Alpha.

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jpwagner
How did google crawl this? Was the pdf link _just_ taken down?

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byrneseyeview
If you search for site:wolframalpha.com , you'll see that Google even crawled
some search results. I guess when it was briefly opened earlier in the week,
Google had a look.

Also, I got one of the TC invites to try W|A a couple hours before the main
launch. It is much less useful than you'd expect. No data on: crime rates,
test scores, alcohol content (though it _does_ tell you the LD50 of alcohol),
etc.

Fun stuff: side-by-side comparisons. Compare Apple and IBM, or Harvard and
University of Phoenix.

Also, for some of the stocks it shows a "simulated log-normal random walks
based on historical parameters" -- a couple charts of ways the stock could
theoretically perform in the future. Not too useful, but fun.

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auston
Hmm how did you find out how to log in!?

I got one as well but could not figure out how to log in.

edit got it: preview.wolframalpha.com

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byrneseyeview
Yeah, they had to send a follow-up email. It looks like the beta was kind of
last-minute; my email from the Wolfram folks misspelled "Wolfram" _and_
"Password" -- and mixed up my password and my username.

But they caught the relevant mistakes pretty fast.

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jack7890
I'm curious to see the sort of services that people build with this. This
could be a opportunity to get in at the beginning of something huge. Anyone
have any cool ideas?

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michaelkeenan
I dream of an automated fact-checker. Of course, to do it right you need
Turing Test-passing AI. But if you start small, with the capability to parse a
few statements of a few forms, that would still be useful.

I saw an argument on HN recently where people made these statements:

1\. The UK is a much more violent society than the US, statistically.

2\. There are dozens of U.S. cities with higher per capita murder rates than
London or any other city in the UK.

3\. Murder rates are higher in the US, but murder is a small fraction of
violent crime. All other violent crime is much more common in the UK than in
the US.

No-one provided sources; people asked for them later. Suppose HN ran an
automated fact-checker over every sentence ever posted, searching for
statements of the form: "[country] is (much|a lot)? more [quality] than
[country]" - or a more sophisticated regex that captures more applicable
cases.

And then, for the sentences that it understands, it checks the claim. Maybe it
highlights incorrect statements in red, or just adds footnotes. This might
make online debates more rigorous. Not only would a few statements be fact-
checked, but the knowledge that a fact-checking program will look at your
comment might incentivize people to be more careful with facts.

Newspapers and other media would find automated fact-checkers useful too.

Taking a longer view (like decades), with good speech-to-text technology, it
could fact-check TV broadcasts in real-time. This should improve the debate
quality not just of obscure internet forums, but also nationally-broadcast TV.
Then, maybe, we'd see an improvement in the accuracy of all political debate,
which should improve democracy.

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fizx
I deeply want the ability to supply my own datasets, which can be
graphed/explored with their tools.

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aneesh
Then just install Mathematica :-)

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ujal
A delicacy for Augmented reality startups such as Mobilizy.

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dilanj
'Wolfram' is a terrible name for a search engine. Many languages around the
world do not even use a letter akin to 'w', often using 'v' in place of both
'v' and 'w'. This is one reason for Yahoo's dominance in non-native English
speaking countries.

'Wolfram' will be unpronounceable and unmemorable for a large percentage of
world's population.

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rythie
Wolfram is the existing brand they have already long established which already
is well known in Universities through Mathematica product. Since this product
will appeal to a similar set of users, it wouldn't be a good idea to start a
fresh with a new brand.

