What, two weeks since a roundup? Say it aint so! Yes folks, last week was a holiday for us, and I was too busy Friday to set one up beforehand. Don’t worry though, I’m a slave to my job every monday from now until some time in the autumn. Or until I successfully lobby the BC government for a four day work week.
This week we have the release of Chrome 2, WolframAlpha, new features for Google Suggest, usability considerations for SEO, and more…
The problem with Wolfram Alpha isn’t something that can be fixed by a dev team; it’s too closed. Unlike Google, it’s trying to find focused information, and unlike wikipedia it isn’t allowing the user manipulation and content submission that would fix errors as they occur. Wolframs focus is in building centralized (or in this case authorized) data bases of links based on dev selection, instead of user interaction. It is designed as a top-down, instead of a bottom-up information system. Thus its potential knowledge base will always be substantially smaller than that that Wikipedia or even Google could provide, and due to its complexity (and frequent lack fo content) likely more troublesome to use. Its only strength is in its qualified answers, but thats meaningless to people either too limited in knowledge about wikipedia/google to be wary of it, or knowledgable enough about both to be able to gather proper research with them.
So what could fix it? Well, its a great interface. Really great. It also has a neat parsing concept. So why not expand it? Why not make it an interface for, say, wikipedia. Then give people greater control over keyword selection and preference (like, say, being able to choose from a drop down menu other options for that keyword—like Alberta, Canada), and maybe even connect a result to the keywords they’re looking for, should they not find it immediately on page (this would immediately resolve issues like “Alberta, Canada” returning no results)? This would also give it a HUGE database of information to work from. Finally, it would be integrating directly with the tools people are already using, meaning adoption would likely be much faster.
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