alpha

We discuss a computer algorithm that can determine if photos are pretty or not. I guess hot or not is going out of business. We also look at the causes of the Google error and speculate on how Wolfram Alpha will be used.

Networking error caused Google outage http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10241126-93.html

International Energy Agency says CE is gobbling up energy faster than green measures can save it http://www.reuters.com/article/GCA-GreenBusiness/idUSTRE54C4K420090514?sp=true http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/2009/05/power-hungry-gadgets-endanger-energy-efficiency-gains.ars … Read more

One of my concerns with the public launch of Wolfram Alpha later this month is withstanding the crushing load the Internet can impose. But Wolfram Research revealed Tuesday it's building the service on the world's 66th-fastest supercomputer.

The machine, built out of Dell hardware by a company called R Systems, can sustain performance of 39.6 trillion mathematical operations per second, according to the November 2008 list of the top 500 supercomputers. That muscle will come in handy for Alpha, which I think of as a combination of a graphing calculator, search engine, and reference library that not … Read more

On today's show, we have a lot to apologize for, but don't hold your breath because it ain't happening. (It's all just a desperate plea for more voicemail.) The short version is this: Kindle DX is ludicrously expensive, Blu-Ray is catching on but totally shouldn't be, and Craigslist is officially a pimp.

Kindle DX unveiled: 9.7-inch screen (2x area), $489, summer ‘09 delivery, integrated PDF, textbook emphasis, Times, Globe, and Post all “testing” it http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-10234355-93.html http://bit.ly/iyLfo

What to … Read more

Wolfram Alpha is like a cross between a research library, a graphing calculator, and a search engine. But does Wolfram Research's "computational knowledge engine," set to debut publicly later this month, live up to its hype as a Web site that Google needs to be afraid of?

Wolfram Alpha creator Stephen Wolfram on Tuesday gave a demo of the service to a crowd of online reporters. Few have access to the private test version of the service itself, but we got access Monday night. We found it compelling, if limited.

We're eager to see this site develop. It does things with online information that Google does not. Here are our impressions of the current version of Wolfram Alpha.

CNET reporter Stephen Shankland: Today at least, Wolfram Alpha is for the tech crowd--the kind of people who want to dig into the data. It's a great exploration tool to find out whether somebody who's 5 feet 5 inches and 160 pounds is overweight, the chemical properties of boron, and whether you're going to get a full moon during the evening of September 4 in Buenos Aires when you want to propose to your fiancee.

It'll tell you the family, genus, species, and caloric value of an apple, and it'll forecast Apple's stock price, but it won't give you apple pie recipes. It'll tell you the box office take of the first "Star Trek" movie, but it won't tell you the theater where you can see the newest "Star Trek" movie.

But a technical audience is still big. This could unlock a lot of data that students, research assistants, lawyers, marketing managers, financial analysts, and scientists might not have readily available. And those folks are important, too--just the kind of influential folks people with Web sites like to reach.

CNET Editor Rafe Needleman: I wouldn't dream of pointing my parents at this. It's too picky about syntax and not intuitive to get into. When I saw Stephen Wolfram give a demo of the system I was blown away. He ran through dozens of demos from weather to genetics to calculus to finance, each resulting in beautiful and informative results. But when I tried the service I'd say maybe only 10 or 20 percent of my queries actually worked.

Shankland: On the other hand, my dad has a Ph.D. and I most definitely will point him at it. He bought Wolfram Research's all-purpose computation software, Mathematica, though, so for him Wolfram Alpha is like preaching to the choir.

Needleman: My dad has a Ph.D., too, but in philosophy. There is no Wolfram Alpha for that.

Shankland: Yet. Alpha handles numeric data well, but loosey-goosey stuff like art or philosophy is tough. But maybe in some glorious future Alpha will be able to chart the trains of thought from the Enlightenment to the present.

Needleman: You need a clear mind to take advantage of this service. Again, it's picky about syntax, and in the pre-release version we tried, if you got a query wrong--if it didn't return what you were looking for--it wouldn't offer you much in the way of help to refine the query. I kept trying to figure out how to correlate weather with earthquakes in San Francisco. I can get the data for weather. I can get it for earthquakes. So I know that Alpha has the information. But I can't figure out how to show them together.

What the system does know is beautifully presented. Type in the name of a city, for example, and it will give you some fun stats on a clean and clear Web page. But from that sort of page you'll probably want to start exploring the data available: Maybe you want to know about population growth, economic information, or weather trends. Alpha doesn't give you hints as to what's available, nor a good way to drill into data. You have to take stabs at re-typing your query. I tried a variety of queries like "test scores san francisco schools" and "population of portland by year" and got, respectively, no result and a pointless result (533,429 person years: what is that?). The system that interprets Wolfram Alpha queries needs a little bit of help. It may be improved by the time the system is opened to the public, later this month, but I think that this will be the product's Achilles heel. … Read more

Updated at 3:12 p.m. PDT with further detail.

Wolfram Research founder Stephen Wolfram publicly debuted his company's forthcoming online "computational knowledge engine" Tuesday--but search Goliath Google launched a service of its own that bears significant resemblance.

The Wolfram Alpha engine is a Web service designed to process data from controlled, vetted sources of data--many not on the Web--then present the results in a way that lets people dig deeper into the subject. It's something of a cross between a graphing calculator, repositories of scientific data, and a system to interpret questions posed in human … Read more

PALM DESERT, Calif.--On the day that the Dow sank below 7,000 for the first time since 1997, a panel of venture capitalists told attendees at Demo 2009 what most people already know. This is an extremely challenging environment for raising money.

But challenging doesn't mean impossible. There are still some opportunities for both entrepreneurs and investors.

The panel, which was moderated by Matt Marshall of VentureBeat consisted of Christine Herron of First Round Capital, David Hornik of August Capital, Bryce T. Roberts of O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, and Eric Tilenius of Tilenius Investments.

Tilenius said that "… Read more

This free tool performs one function and one function only: it lets users adjust the transparency of any active window. But for such a simple task, we found its performance sketchy at best.

Windows Alpha Blender settings can be accessed by right-clicking on the taskbar icon and selecting the Properties option. The sparse menu that appears offers vague instructions. There is some guidance for adjusting the transparency, which requires using two hotkey combinations. There is also a slide bar for adjusting the transparency level. Once we selected our transparency level, we used the hotkey combinations to turn the transparency action … Read more

Various Microsoft enthusiast sites were buzzing on Thursday about purported screenshots of Office 14, which is in early testing.

A Russian site, wzor.net, put up a bunch of screenshots of the individual products that make up the suite, as well as an about page and start menu that seem to show a whole lot of Office 14 products are on the way.

According to one screenshot (seen above), we can expect Access, Excel, Groove, InfoPath, InterConnect, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Project, Publisher, SharePoint Designer, Vizio, and Word. There's also a reference on one shot to the product being Office … Read more

There's something of a cottage industry on the Internet of making parodies through artful subtitles of Der Untergang, a movie about the last throes of the Third Reich. And now there's one that takes on Nikon's D3X, the company's new $8,000, 24.5-megapixel SLR.

The subtitles depict Adolf Hitler coming to terms with the arrival of Sony's Alpha A900. One amusing moment comes when a minion listening to Hitler's rant comforts a weeping colleague, "There, there, I hear he shoots only JPEG." (In case the humor is lost on you, that'… Read more