Blog

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...

Just a kick post to tell everyone excentric is on the short list for digital agency of the year 2008 by Meios & Publicidade (only in portuguese).

It's not me, but Microsoft itself who's saying it on his "Europe Logs On" study, released yesterday. In 18 months, people will spend more time browsing the web than watching TV. Other key findings of the study are:

• Europeans spent on average 1.5 days a month on the Internet in 2008, and by 2010 will spend 2.5, which represents a 66% growth
• Internet use on PCs will drop from 95% today to only 50% over the next 5 years due to increase usage of IPTV, games consoles and mobile phones accessing the web
• Online video is the most popular online entertainment application
• Content and communications services represents 65% of all time spent online, and commerce represents 33%
• Being one of the European countries with lower penetration, Portugal has today more than 4 million people using the Internet</ul>

  This and much more is available in the study.

Just found BumpTop, a nice looking 3D desktop, like a real desk, but better. Still not sure if it's good for me, but I always like to see innovative products. Well, actually it's not for me, currently it runs only on the Windows platform, and since I'm a Mac user, I will have to wait to give it a try. But, hey, there are still very good people out there using Windows. Here is the demo video:

RSS readers should click here to watch the video.

It's that time of the year again. It's 9 A.M. GMT and I already found some nice stories around. Here's what I've found so far:

• Addega to buy Corkd
• Google's Cadie
• Opera face gestures, the funniest of them all. Watch the video:

What else do you see out there?

Update: via comments, other pranks out there:

• TheMage points out that Warner Brothers acquired the Pirate Bay