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Planes overhead

wolframalpha.com

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Re: Planes overhead

#81

Post by Aqwis »

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.

Many students at my (non-US) university use Wolfram Alpha for graphing, simplification of formulas and similar every day, yet most have no idea that Mathematica even exists. If Wolfram wants Wolfram Alpha to drive sales of Mathematica they should do more to advertise that program through the service.

Re: Planes overhead

#82

Post by oostevo »

pinwale wrote: post #76
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...

Has someone tried using this "overhead planes" query with Siri? It should be possible because Siri uses Wolfram Alpha for some questions.

Yes:

http://www.reddit.com/r/apple/comments/m9z03/one_of_the_cool...

Re: Planes overhead

#83

Post by minhajuddin »

frisco wrote: post #3

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

Cloudy calculator is an awesome interface to wolfram alpha, right from your browser (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/acgimceffoceigocab...) Just enter something like '10 usd to inr' for quickly converting US dollars to Indian Rupees

Re: Planes overhead

#84

Post by alicebob »

ConstantineXVI wrote: post #49
obiterdictum wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually it's currently used in Apple's Siri to answer factual questions.

Interesting parallel; the original NeXT computer (also created by Jobs and the iPhone's ancestor by way of NeXTSTEP->MacOSX->iOS) bundled a copy of Mathematica.

Read http://blog.wolfram.com/2011/10/06/steve-jobs-a-few-memories... for a nice story about that.

Re: Planes overhead

#85

Post by dazbradbury »

mseebach wrote: post #42
dazbradbury wrote: post #31

I'm currently sat in Heathrow airport, one of the busiest airports in the world. Result: none.

One of the key features of airports is the lack of planes overhead. Also, I think it only works in the US.

So you don't think there is any tolerance in place? ie. You have to be stood directly under a plane for it to be listed? Clearly not.

Shame it's US only, but I imagine it's difficult collating a full worldwide dataset.

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