Just when I was starting to worry…

After the first couple of weeks on Twitter, tweeting about very mundane tasks, getting a grip on what the site was really about, I finally fell in love with Twitter, essentially, for one purpose: the flow of information. When news happens, it’s on Twitter long before any editors can approve an article for web publishing, and before the major news outlets (eg. AP, Reuters) even send out notices. I remember specifically a plane had crashed, and news of it spread on Twitter. Michael van Poppel of BNO News called the coroner’s office in the town the plane crashed, to the shock of the clerk that answered the phone. Poppel tweeted out that the clerk asked, “How did you hear so FAST?” And that’s where I think the real power behind Twitter lay. Something happens, and the Twitterverse knows instantly.

When Trending Topics were moved from the less-than-obvious search page, to the home page, I was quickly disappointed to find that memes were taking the place of information. #3turnoffwords and #3turnonwords hit the trends and are still being tweeted about. I’m not sure why I was so surprised by this. I expected there would be fun and games, but I suppose I didn’t imagine the games would quickly out weigh the information. I started thinking Twitter was losing a small bit of that information flow. It’s always nice to have a reminder that things just aren’t what they appear. I think that, most likely, Robert Scoble deserves credit for this one.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares victory in the Iranian Presidential election, the government shuts down mobile phones, and access to YouTube and Twitter within Iran, opponent Mousavi accuses Ahmadinejad of rigging the election, and Tehran is set ablaze by protesters. Twitter is flowing with real-time updates, photos and videos of riots, and police action. Meanwhile, main stream media, specifically, CNN, is running Larry King discussing David Letterman vs Sarah Palin. Enter Scoble. “CNN: you should be ashamed. Horrid news judgment today. Absolutely horrid.” It didn’t take long for disgust towards CNN to migrate from FriendFeed to Twitter.

As I type this, #iranelection, #cnnfail, Tehran, and Mousavi are all in the top five Trending Topics. Although CNN has been the one graced with a failtag, it’s not the only main stream media that’s ignoring the events taking place in Iran. In a retweet, Scoble points out that all of the networks failed. Luckily, Twitter’s on this story. Otherwise, who else would?

Review: WolframAlpha.com

When it comes to Wolfram|Alpha, let me just start by saying, stop reading anything that wants you to believe Wolfram|Alpha is a search engine or is “close to being” a search engine, because it’s not. Wolfram|Alpha is a computational engine. It does not provide “search results.” It provides “data.” It is not a link between you and a website relevant to your interests. Wolfram|Alpha is more of an encyclopedic-super-calculator-data-aggregator/comparison-information-machine. And that’s really just scratching the surface of Wolfram|Alpha‘s capabilities.

I want to start “small” with what Wolfram|Alpha can accomplish. It’s actually taken me a bit to really understand the power this site has, and all of the tech articles out there passing it off as “The Google Killer That Couldn’t,” didn’t help in the least. Mathematics is going to be the most common aspect of the site that is used and mentioned. Enter in any simple equation–(2+2)4 for example–and Wolfram|Alpha will provide the answer, nice and sweet. Now, throw in something a little more exciting: x^2 sin(x). Wolfram|Alpha chose this particular input/result with good reason, that being, it shows off. From plots, to roots, to alternative representation, Wolfram|Alpha gives you all the possible data related to the input.

Moving on from equations, let’s talk historical data. Try December 7, 1988, in Philadelphia. The first information given is about the date, specifically. How long ago was the date? What day in the year was it? Which week in the year? Then, it moves on to the city on that date, giving the temperature throughout the day, including high, low, and average, cloud cover, time of sunrise and sunset, and moon phase. Finishing it off, Wolfram|Alpha provides data strictly about the city/area, such as the city center elevation and population at the time of the closest census. I think first of story writers. Not all writers want to be factual about small details, such as the weather or when the sun rose, but for those that do, this is perfect.

The informational scope that Wolfram|Alpha encompasses is incredible. Maybe you’re into buying and selling stocks. Type in a few stock symbols, and Wolfram|Alpha will give you side-by-side comparison. Maybe you’re a musician, looking to find scales. Or maybe you’re just into music and want to know who wrote that song and when it came out and how high on the charts it got. Into astronomy (or working on a school paper?) Find the position of nearly any celestial body at any date, or find specific details, such as mass and orbital period, about them.
On a diet? Figuring out a mortgage? Play the lottery? Are you a physicist? Interested in political figures? There are piles upon piles of uses for this site. Wolfram|Alpha‘s about page says it “contains 10+ trillion of pieces of data, 50,000+ types of algorithms and models, and linguistic capabilities for 1000+ domains.”

Overall: Even if you think you’re never going to use Wolfram|Alpha, stop reading this blog right now, and head to WolframAlpha.com/examples/ and look around at just some of what the engine is capable of computing. This is the website I wish I had when I was in grade school using Microsoft Encarta for research, and it most definitely gets play with my current studies.