Wolfram|Alpha to Launch Publicly Tonight

Wolfram|Alpha is called a knowledge engine because, as opposed to a standard search engine, it tries to answer questions instead of just searching for related results. An example of such a question might be "what is the percentage of women in the U.S. who breast-feed vs. bottle feed."

The type of question it would not answer would be something like "what is the meaning of life;" rather it is meant to give factual output.

At the same time as the webcast begins, the site will go live as well, and a question that might or might not be posed to the knowledge

Stephen Wolfram is perhaps best known for the program Mathematica, which is computational software used widely in scientific, engineering, and mathematical fields. Wolfram|Alpha builds on his work with Mathematica and his book, A New Kind of Science and applies it to search.

Here's a question I hope the Wolfram|Alpha team can answer affirmatively: did Wolfram|Alpha prepare enough servers for the load it received? Based on how things like this usually go, I would bet on "No," but I could be wrong.

Watch a presentation from the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University where Stephen Wolfram discussed the new system.