The new creation from Dr. Stephen Wolfram, named WolframAlpha, is being heralded as possibly the most important technological invention of the the last decade. And why is that? The scientific community is referring it as an "answer engine" or "knowledge engine", rather than a search engine, since it provides users with the ability of typing a question and being given an answer. Note, that's an answer and not a list of websites.

It doesn't simply return documents that (might) contain the answers, like Google does, and it isn't just a giant database of knowledge, like the Wikipedia. Instead, Wolfram Alpha actually computes the answers to a wide range of questions - like questions that have factual answers such as "How many Internet users are in Europe", "What is the weather in Lisbon?" or "What is the 307th digit of Pi?".

The service will opens to the public on May 18. Meanwhile, you can take a peek on this blurry video from Youtube:

Is Google in danger due to WolframAlpha? There's a growing discussion about it in the community, some call it the next Google, others say they complement each other. And since WolframAlpha as (yet) no known business model, I guess we'll have to wait and see...