Chilled Out Bearded Man

Wolfram|Alpha has been live for one week and it sounds like its a huge success. They received a ton of feedback from users and seem satisfied with how the system functioned for the week. The latest from the Wolfram Blog:

- Subjects of interest need to be expanded.

- 25% of queries were not interpretable by the system. but most of them had partial interpretations.

- Mathematics notation is working very well

- For testing, validating code symbolically using Mathematica saves them time

Go Wolfram! Its not there yet. But the concept is still awesome and will change the way we find information over the next few years.

Keep up with the latest about Wolfram Alpha on the Wolfram Alpha Blog:
http://blog.wolframalpha.com/2009/05/26/the-first-week-of-wolframalpha-thank-you/

Originally, it sounded as though Wolfram|Alpha would be able to answer any question under the sun – and perhaps that is the eventual goal. For now, it seems as though Wolfram is capable of answering only Factual questions. In other words, unless there is an exact answer to your question, Wolfram cannot answer.

For example, type in Thomas Jefferson. You get a few dates and the fact that he was “head of state”. But it does not tell you that he was the President of the United States of America, nor that he wrote the Declaration of Independence.

Something cool to note is that there is a link at the bottom of the page that tells you where the information most likely came from. It says, “This list is intended as a guide to sources of further information.” Then it follows with, “The inclusion of an item in this list does not necessarily mean that its content was used as the basis for any specific Wolfram|Alpha result.” In other words, it seems like Wolfram Alpha checks a variety of the most respectable and accepted sources of knowledge to find the correct value.

Tell me more. This thing is cool and will only get cooler.

I am curious what will happen once there is too much information about a specific topic. How will it get organized on a page. A simple example of this is entering the names of 3 public companies:

Dell Citigroup johnson & johnson

It gives you quite a lot of information for that question. But it is still nowhere near the length of a long Wikipedia article. But what will happen when you ask it an extremely complex and convoluted question? Will it spit out a 100,000 line answer that your browser will barely be able to load? Or will it find some beautiful way to organize the information?
Tell me more, please.

Here are a few fun questions to ask Wolfram Alpha about itself?

What is your name?

What is your job?

When were you born?

Who created you?

Where do you live?

If you need a simple refreshing movie to clear your head, you can watch the movie Henry Poole is Here. Its about a man and life. Its simple.

Wolfram Alpha might be the most useful innovation on the internet since Google’s search and page rank algorithms. Wolfram Alpha organizes human knowledge in a computable manner so that you can ask it a question and it will give you the answer. Rather than showing you search results like Google would do, Wolfram|Alpha actually tells you useful answers to your question.

Wolfram|Alpha is being released in May 2009, so we should be able to see it any day now. In the meantime…

See and hear the sneak preview:
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/events/2009/04/wolfram

Its coming May 2009. And its lookin’ oh so cool.

Its gonna show you everything you need to know about everything.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/

Alright… I didn’t make him. But I knew him before he was what he is today. Don Hertzfeld was just a plain old dull pencil like the rest of us. From the moment we were placed in the same class, I knew that Don Hertzfeld would be something special – a step up from me – better at making things clearer. After years of honing, the sharp Don that you know and love was finally created. He went from being a standard number two to number one in the class. I had been number one, but he erased me, plain and simple. He just wiped me right off the board. My remains were left outside with the other rocks to fend for myself. Don would stare out the window now and again to check on me, but I had known from the day he came into that class that he would be the teacher’s pet. I knew that, because I was at the head of the class and he was merely writing on a boring desk. But I liked him. I really did. Everyday was a new day for Don. Everyday he would come in a little sharper, a little more prepared for the day’s work. And everyday, I felt a little more worn down, a little shorter and with less to give. One day, first thing in the morning, Don came running into the room. Someone tripped and sent Don flying four feet through the air. He landed below me sprawled out like a tree with no branches. Someone could have been injured pretty badly, but alas, all eyes were spared from such a disaster. He was lucky to still be in one piece after a fall like that. But I knew that was the end for me. I had been worn down to nothingness. That day, Don was picked up. He was looking extra sharp in his yellow suit. I knew that my position at the head of the class was over. I stepped aside – or I should say I was wiped aside - my remnants thrown out to the dogs and Don took his rightful position as the lead of the class. His taste was very stylized. His descriptions of things were impeccable. A part of me was still in that class, but mostly, I had been blown to the wind. What remained of me faded away slowly. Don Hertzfeld, the sharpest pencil in town, took my job.

I know this story makes no sense whatsolutely. But sometimes, thats the point. What’s the point? Don’s the point. He uses points to draw points with points. You probably get it by now. The end will come, even for Don the pencil. Come back next to see Don reach his end, as the shiny Ben Pic roles his way past Don.

I have never understood what people mean when they say that a genius is a person who knows the answer and just needs to figure out how to get to it. The most common example is the fact that Einstein calculated the equation for relativity and got the correct answer even though when people reviewed the calculations they discovered errors. Once they corrected the errors, his answer was still correct.

What is a successful businessman? A good business man is a man with goals. He knows what he wants to achieve. Whether his intentions are good or evil, he would be considered a successful business man if he sets out a goal and achieves it.

In life, we are all wondering what our purpose is. The geniuses understand. They have some end goal that they know to work towards. Sometimes they might not understand the road to get there, but that is not a problem as long as they have ambition and perseverence. They already know the answer. They only need to get to it.

Its like walking down a road. If you know your final destination, you can reach it. If you don’t have a destination that you are heading towards, then there is no way for you to get there. This is because “there” is nowhere unless it is somewhere. So you must set yourself goals. Finding the road to reach the goals is the pleasure of living life with meaning. (What is the meaning of life, you ask?)

And what about all those people who set out to achieve a goal and failed? Weren’t their lives miserable? No. They felt alive each and every day they spent trying to achieve that goal. They toiled and tortured themselves, but there was a constant “light at the end of the tunnel”.

All of the people who had a goal were happy, but what of those of us who have no goal? We don’t know our purpose. We feel lost. We have no direction.

Well, if you were sitting in the desert and you felt lost, what would you do? Would you sit in one place and let yourself die? No! You would choose a direction and start walking. And if you hit a dead end, you would choose another direction and walk some more. You choose a direction and you go.

We must all choose a direction. If we know the destination, then it will be that much easier to choose a direction. If we do not know the destination, if we do not have an obvious goal, then we must make choices and push in a direction.

Many of us allow the road to be chosen for us. We believe that fate will choose our direction. If we leave many doors open, then life will close the unwanted doors for us, we think to ourselves. But I beg to differ. “Life” does not know what doors are correct. “Life” is not an intelligent mind like a human mind. “Life” is a way of saying that we are animate beings. And we are animate beings with intelligence. “Life” does not control. “Life is” as they say “what we make of it”.

We are intelligent. We must use our intelligence to choose a path. And when our intelligence fails us, we must choose a path from the ones available. Making a wise decision is extremely valuable. Making a bad decision is less so. But making no decision at all is the worst. Sitting in the desert and allowing ourselves to die without living first is a waste of our intelligence, a waste of our potential and a gauranteed way to feel dead long before our “life” stops. And on the upside, if you choose a direction and maybe find that special something, people will know that you are a genius and that you lived a “meaningful” life.

(There is no answer to the meaning of life, because the meaning of life is not a question. Think about that for a second. Or don’t. It really makes no sense. We have life. Thats that. Now give it meaning.)

In the movie Zeitgeist, Jacques Fresco says that politicians cannot solve problems because unlike engineers, they are not trained to solve problems. The Venus Project, who is behind Zeitgeist, is a new solution civilization – a redesign of civilization by scientists. Discussing the implications of this is another discussion for another time. The point I want to make right now is that Barack Obama is doing a wonderful job of using technology to communicate with the people.

Just the fact that he is using the internet to send updates to the people (i.e. his weekly addresses) and to receive questions and ideas from the people (i.e. his town hall meeting) is impressive. The idea that he is pushing for innovation in technology is just above and beyond anything we could have asked for in a president. He wants the US to be the leader in renewable energy. That is incredible, forward thinking, respectable, beneficial, and economical.

Every person wants to find a job that they love. In other words, they want the ability to do what they love at the same time that they are winning bread. Use the same actions to create things as to supply yourself with necessities.

Obama is saying, lets improve energy technology, but lets create jobs and fix the economy in the process. Do what we as a country love – innovating, and at the same time do what we need – create jobs, so that people can spend and reinvigorate the economy.

I still believe that Zeitgeist and the Venus Project are wonderful movements with the best intentions of humanity in mind. Unfortunately, the solutions they recommend will take time to implement on a grande scale. In the meantime, it is good to know that we have a leader who is focusing his energy in a positive and innovative direction.

Check out Obama’s Weekly address here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/weekly_address/

I found the RSS feed for the White House Weekly Addresses here:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/rss/speeches.xml

Here is a link to the “experimental” White House Town Hall Meeting:
http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/09/03/26/Wrapping-Up-Open-for-Questions/
(That’s right, an experiment… Its when you try new things – generally because there is a problem with no currently viable solution. And don’t try to tell me that militarily attacking Iraq was a useful experiment.)

I came across this beautiful design work:
http://www.lee-magazine.com/

This is so aesthetically pleasing. The artist did a wonderful job with the visual elements.

Unfortunately, the design is not very functional or practical.

1) The homepage is currently serving as an about page:
The homepage should not be an about page. The homepage is meant to get the user into the content. Don’t waste time introducing the site. The user will find the about page if they are confused about the site. They probably came here for a reason, anyway, so they have an idea of what they are getting into. The beautiful navigation content on the page is too far down. It should be front and center.

2) The page realestate is being wasted:
- The logo is way too big and takes up too much space.
- The woman’s head is nice, but maybe it could be smaller.
- The “about” content does not need to be here. This needs to be actual content that gets the user involved in the site.

3) The navigation is disconcerting:
- The bottom of the right navigation is off the screen for me. I don’t want to “navigate” down to find more navigation.
- The right navigation seems like it should be worked into the left navigation. This would save space and make things more organized.

One thing that is very impressive about the design is that it is designed using the Drupal CMS (“Content Management System”). Drupal is very good for dynamically managing large amounts of content, users, and administrators. Creating the template for this design and making it work throughout every page was probably a very large task. But once it was done once, every new page gets created dynamically and the only thing that needs to be added is the new content.

All in all, to improve the user experience, I would say that the visual appeal needs to come in a close second after the functionality.

What do you think?