Quarter of Wolfram Alpha brainteasers come from Siri
Apple's smart-arse software relies on boffinry website
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A quarter of traffic to the intelligent computational engine Wolfram Alpha comes from Siri, Stephen Wolfram said in a New York Times article.
The robot-loving physicist (who once said that all science needed to know could be found by studying the behaviour of cellular automata) launched the knowledgable super-brain in 2009.
Wolfram's threat to knock Google down a peg or two was mocked at the time, our Reg reviewer declaring the web service a tool primarily for boffins. However, the computation engine has been tweaked and is now a fundamental part of Siri, helping fanboys who whisper sweet nothings into their iPhone 4Ss get intelligent responses.
Wolfram Alpha is one of the few third-party apps that feeds answers into Apple's voice-controlled know-it-all Siri: Google Maps and Yelp! local search being the other two. Siri works by following commands from users and answering their questions.
The Wolfram-backed Apple service could be one of the biggest threats to Google's search engine: the web giant's supremo Eric Schmidt said as much himself.
Wolfram also gets traffic from Bing and is launching a paid-for premium service today, costing $4.99 a month. ®
COMMENTS
"Being proprietary and non-free..."
Does it do the job you need it to do, with less effort than required by alternatives? Then it is perfectly appropriate. Otherwise, the free tools you suggested are fine. Turning tool choice into a holy war seems rather pointless; making irrational decisions based on ideology should not be what research is about either. Stick to the facts, and let the GNU folk engage in the license zealotry.
"Quarter of Wolfram Alpha brainteasers come from Siri"?
Am I the only one here who reckons the title is the wrong way round?
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