Broken promise
By Charles Miller

With much fanfare, including this column a couple of weeks back, the much-anticipated next generation internet search engine made its debut.

On May 16, Wolfram/Alpha launched its “computational knowledge engine,” promising to absolutely revolutionize how we all use the internet.

In that earlier column I wrote of my experience trying to use the internet’s number one search engine, Google, to locate information pertaining to a Mexican bus line named Ave (pronounced “aah-vay”). This was an exercise in frustration because Ave happens to also be an abbreviation for “avenue,” and so searching for “Ave” only resulted in Google returning search results for millions of avenues.

No matter how much I refined my search parameters, Google simply was not able to narrow down its search results to anything useful to me. Searching for the name Ave was guaranteed to always produce thousands of extraneous and unrelated hits because “avenue” is such a common term.

Enter Wolfram/Alpha and its promise to be more understanding of what users are really searching for. The new computational knowledge engine is supposed to be able to understand that when you search for “new bus company in Mexico,” you are not looking for “company bus in New Mexico.”

I pointed my browser to www.wolframalpha.com, where I started off by asking “Web page for Ave bus line in Mexico.” It was a relief not to be bombarded with millions of irrelevant hits, but the new kid on the block simply responded with “Wolfram/Alpha isn’t sure what to do with your input.”

Several times (actually seventeen times), I tried refining my search question only to be told every time that “Wolfram/Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.” Clearly I was not getting off to a very auspicious start. After seventeen straight misses, the average person wants to see some sort of result. You may now disregard all my previous complaints about Google returning millions of extraneous hits. At least Google did offer something and never once said “Google isn’t sure what to show you.”

As does any good website, Wolfram/Alpha includes a help page with suggestions on how to more effectively use the site. This page lists suggestions, such as entering the name of a place, entering a calculation or any chemical formula or any musical notes. Sorry, but this is not getting me any closer to finding the right Ave.

The website states that, “Wolfram/Alpha answers specific questions rather than explaining general topics” and “You can only get answers about objective facts,” and “Only what is known is known to Wolfram/Alpha.” That last quote seems to be the crux of the problem I experienced.

I made what I consider to be a good-faith effort to follow the instructions: “Don’t use long complete sentences; just enter the minimum number of words needed to communicate” and the somewhat pedantic “Check your spelling.”

I am trying not to be too harsh with this new search tool, but this is difficult when after a half hour I must have seen a hundred times that message “Wolfram/Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.” I am afraid the average internet user will get frustrated very quickly with Wolfram/Alpha because my first experience was quite a disappointment and failed to live up to its billing as a new paradigm for using computers and the web.



Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044 (415) 101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.