hi shahnaz, I read yor mesage it was enlightening one. but i could not undrstand the word [Alpha] can yu please explain it for me.
regards akhilesh On 5/1/09, shahnaz <[email protected]> wrote: > > BBC NEWS > Web tool 'as important as Google' > A web tool that "could be as important as Google", according to some > experts, has > been shown off to the public. > Wolfram Alpha is the brainchild of British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram. > The free program aims to answer questions directly, rather than display web > pages > in response to a query like a search engine. > The "computational knowledge engine", as the technology is known, will be > available > to the public from the middle of May this year. > "Our goal is to make expert knowledge accessible to anyone, anywhere, > anytime," said > Dr Wolfram at the demonstration at Harvard University's Berkman Center for > Internet > and Society. > The tool computes many of the answers "on the fly" by grabbing raw data from > public > and licensed databases, along with live feeds such as share prices and > weather information. > People can use the system to look up simple facts - such as the height of > Mount Everest > - or crunch several data sets together to produce new results, such as a > country's > GDP. > Other functions solve complex mathematical equations, plot scientific > figures or > chart natural events. > "Like interacting with an expert, it will understand what you're talking > about, do > the computation, and then present you with the results," said Dr Wolfram. > As a result, much of the data is scientific, although there is also limited > cultural > information about pop stars and films. > Dr Wolfram said the "trillions of pieces of data" were chosen and managed by > a team > of "experts" at Wolfram Research, who also massage the information to make > sure it > can be read and displayed by the system. > Nova Spivak, founder of the web tool Twine, has described Alpha as having > the potential > to be as important to the web as Google. > "Wolfram Alpha is like plugging into a vast electronic brain," he wrote > earlier this > year. "It computes answers - it doesn't merely look them up in a big > database." > Learning language > The new tool uses a technique known as natural language processing to return > answers. > This allows users to ask questions of the tool using normal, spoken language > rather > than specific search terms. > For example, a relatively simple search, such as "who was the president of > Brazil > in 1923?", will return the answer "Artur da Silva Bernardes". > This technique has long been the holy grail of computer scientists who aim > to allow > people to interact with computers in an instinctive way. > Dr Wolfram said that Alpha has solved many of the problems of interpreting > people's > questions. > "We thought there would be a huge amount of ambiguity in search terms, but > it turns > out not to be the case," he said. > In addition, he said, the system had got "pretty good at removing linguistic > fluff", > the kinds of words that are not necessary for the system to find and compute > the > relevant data. > Simple text > However, he said, most users tend to stop using structured sentences fairly > quickly. > "Pretty soon they get lazy, and they say 'I don't need all those extra > words'." > Instead they tended to use "concepts" similar to how most people use search > engines > today. > But Dr Boris Katz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a natural > language > expert, said he was "disappointed" by Dr Wolfram's "dismissal of English > syntax as > 'fluff'''. > For example, he said, suppose someone asks ''When did Barack Obama visit > Nicolas > Sarkozy?" > "Here, understanding the sentence structure is important if you want to be > able to > distinguish cases where it was Barack Obama who visited Nicolas from cases > where > it was Nicolas Sarkozy who visited Barack Obama," he said. > "I believe he is misguided in treating language as a nuisance instead of > trying to > understand the way it organises concepts into structures that require > understanding > and harnessing." > Dr Katz is the head of the Start project, a natural language processing tool > that > claims to be "the world's first web-based question answering system". It has > been > on the web since December 1993. > Like Alpha, the system searches a series of organised databases to return > relevant > answers to search queries. However, it only uses public databases and runs > on a much > smaller scale than Alpha. > Dr Katz said, it answers "millions of questions from hundreds of thousands > of users > from around the world" on topics as diverse as places, movies, people and > dictionary > definitions. > It is also able to compute answers form several sources in a similar way to > Alpha. > Web companies have also harnessed natural language processing. > For example, Powerset, uses technology developed at the Palo Alto Research > Center, > the former research laboratories of Xerox. > The company is attempting to build a similar search engine "that reads and > understands > every sentence on the Web". > In May 2008, the company released a tool that allowed people to search parts > of Wikipedia. > Two months later, it was acquired by Microsoft. > Dr Wolfram said he has been working on Alpha for several years. However, he > imagines > that it will continue to evolve. > "In a sense we are at the beginning," he said. > Story from BBC NEWS: > > > > Own a website.Get an unlimited package.Pay next to nothing.*Go to > http://in.business.yahoo.com/ > > > > To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with > the subject unsubscribe. > > To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please > visit the list home page at > http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in > To unsubscribe send a message to [email protected] with the subject unsubscribe. To change your subscription to digest mode or make any other changes, please visit the list home page at http://accessindia.org.in/mailman/listinfo/accessindia_accessindia.org.in
