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Planes overhead

wolframalpha.com

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Re: Planes overhead

#51

Post by tedunangst »

thefool wrote: post #18
frisco wrote: post #3

Wolfram Alpha might be the most advanced piece of web technology nobody needs.

Except that it is extremely useful as a powerful calculator for students and professionals doing technical things, and in the process of being very handy teaches people mathematica notation. Just because it's not necessarily aimed at the average person doesn't mean its not aimed at anyone. I expect Wolfram alpha has done a lot to drive sales of mathematica.

I feel the original comment applies not to mathematica, just to the (alpha - mathematica) subset, much of which seems to exist just to prove it can exist. But I don't begrudge them this at all, it's still cool.

Re: Planes overhead

#52

Post by soult »

plestik wrote: post #47
soult wrote: post #40

I am surprised nobody has mentioned Flightradar24[0] yet. It displays planes on a Google Map with altitude, airline and flight path information. The data comes directly from ADS-B receivers of volunteers, so only planes with ADS-B transponder are shown and the coverage outside of Europe is spotty. Living in the path of a mid-size airport this tool is great for identifying noisy airplane types. 0: http://www.flightrad…

There's also PlaneFinder: http://planefinder.net/ And CasperFlights (I'm the Flash developer for this one): http://casperflights.com To be honest, I think Planefinder is the most impressive at the moment, their data is very, very good and their client is pretty decent as well.

It seems all 3 sites use ADS-B receivers as source, so the only measurement in data quality is how many receivers they have and where they are.

I wasn't able to test your Flash software (Flash won't work on my computer), but since you seem to cater to plane spotters mostly: It would be cool to have your data combined with LiveATC.net so that I can see which planes are near an airport and what their pilots are saying.

Re: Planes overhead

#53

Post by ConstantineXVI »

meadhikari wrote: post #29
frisco wrote: post #3

Wolfram Alpha might be the most advanced piece of web technology nobody needs.

http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica-home-edition/ That strongly suggests somebody do need it.

I'd like to know the set of people that:

* Go beyond Alpha's capabilities in home use

* See the need for full-on Mathematica

* Are dedicated enough to make full use of it

* Don't already have access to full-on Mathematica somehow (work/uni computer, etc)

* Can't buy a student license ($140)

* Really wants to spend $300 on it.

Hm, how will I ever figure all that out? :)

Re: Planes overhead

#54

Post by drumdance »

thefool wrote: post #18
frisco wrote: post #3

Wolfram Alpha might be the most advanced piece of web technology nobody needs.

Except that it is extremely useful as a powerful calculator for students and professionals doing technical things, and in the process of being very handy teaches people mathematica notation. Just because it's not necessarily aimed at the average person doesn't mean its not aimed at anyone. I expect Wolfram alpha has done a lot to drive sales of mathematica.

Seems like a pretty expensive marketing tool.

Re: Planes overhead

#55

Post by jarek »

sehugg wrote: post #8
zitterbewegung wrote: post #2

Seems to work for satellites too http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=satellites+overhead

Be cool if you could say "when will the ISS next pass over this location." It seems to interpret that as "where will the ISS be at the next sunrise." "Next solar eclipse" works though.

Heavens Above can help you with that: http://heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=25544&la...

Re: Planes overhead

#57

Post by miles_matthias »

I used Wolfram Alpha when I was taking a cryptography course in college and needed to do really long calculations with exact answers, but haven't been back since. For flight tracking, FlightAware.com (and their new mobile apps) and LiveATC.net (and their mobile apps) are far and away the best to use.

I saw another comment about this working with Siri, which brings up the whole question about integrating Siri with third party apps for me. But I digress...

Re: Planes overhead

#58

Post by pjin »

kami8845 wrote: post #46
antimora wrote: post #23

I think the biggest problem with wolframalpha.com (besides its hard and long name) is functionality discovery. How am I supposed to know it's possible to measure "plane overheads", even if I am on their site? Anyhow, from the website usage, it looks like it never took off: http://trends.google.com/websites?q=wolframalpha.com&geo...

Wolfram Alpha not being able to sustain the "trendiness" it enjoyed during its original release isn't as bad as one might make it out to be. http://trends.google.com/websites?q=wolframalpha.com%2C+gith...

That's interesting to see the related searches between the two. Github users, unsurprisingly, also like Node, MongoDB, etc., whereas Wolfram Alpha users play Minecraft and read webcomics (also popular among Github users). In other words, Wolfram Alpha seems to be commonly used by students, presumably in math, physics, and engineering.

Re: Planes overhead

#60

Post by _delirium »

thefool wrote: post #18
frisco wrote: post #3

Wolfram Alpha might be the most advanced piece of web technology nobody needs.

Except that it is extremely useful as a powerful calculator for students and professionals doing technical things, and in the process of being very handy teaches people mathematica notation. Just because it's not necessarily aimed at the average person doesn't mean its not aimed at anyone. I expect Wolfram alpha has done a lot to drive sales of mathematica.

That's basically what I use it for: a "lite" version of Mathematica as a webservice, hidden inside this other thing that claims to be a search engine.
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