Now, I'm not picking on him there for what he said, but because creator, physicist Stephen Wolfram, has suggested that simple algorithms, rather than complex rules and structures, could be at the root of all science.
I should add that reaction to the idea – which Wolfram said could boil down to a computer program consisting of just "three or four lines of code" – was mixed, and some critics felt that Wolfram unfairly refused to submit his theories to peer review. In other words, he's made the claim, but not backed it up with anything to prove it.
That might just be about to change, with the promised release in May of...
According to its creator, the system understands questions that users input and then calculates the answers based on its extensive mathematical and scientific engine. Even though we haven't had our hands on it, one expert has suggested it "could be as important as Google".
Well, I don't know about some anonymous expert, but I'll be eagerly anticipating the arrival of May (or maybe June.. or July... or... well, you know what happens to most release dates), and the first opinion of The Fox, on this not yet even seen, but acclaimed search engine
Picasa3 has a useful gizmo for superimposing text on your pictures. It is very intuitive and needs no fancy toys. The text transfers to Picasaweb Albums - all very nice but it disappears when you go back to My Pictures and of course does not go onto Photobucket. Very nice Gizmo but not a lot of use in the real (digiital) world. Bit like a chocolate teapot which is a perfect utensil until you put hot water into it!
Presume this is the downloaded and installed Picasa3?
I can only see captions in the online version.
Why would they allow text to be superimposed if it is not saved - or do you mean that it can only be seen in your own online album?
If it went to things like Photobucket, then that would alter the original image, and be permanently embedded and not removable, ever, unless you edited it off using a photo editor.
If you want text added in that way, you'd have to do it in something like IrfanView, or a photo editing package, then save that to the web album, so their chocolate teapot appears to work fine... unless you try and give it away to someone else.
But I'm only guessing from the brief description, as I won't be installing the downloadable Picasa - it and I don't see eye to eye on pic management
Yup, the text is imposed on the uploaded version, leaving your original untarnished.
I just tried downloading a Foxbar pic, and it comes with the text, so online people are stuck with it, you, the owner of the original, have a pristine version - which is as it should be.
You never, ever, ever, tamper with the original that comes from the camera. That almost qualifies as Rule 1 of editing.
If you want the version with the text to put into Photobucket as well, download the modified version, and upload that to Photobucket.
This assumes I have read the description correctly, and that your original on your PC does not have the overlaid text, even when the online version has?
----
I see "Link to photo" has reappeared in the sidebox to the right on Picasa. Here to stay by the look of things.
I would have thought they would have thrown ina save button as well as the Apply button giving you the option of adulterating your pics. Mind you IF you only used Picasa you would not know this was a layer.
The system was demoed and released to a chosen few last month, at which point it was clearly described as being a different beast from Google, and reading to the end of the Telegraph item we find:
Quoted Text
“It’s not a ‘Google killer’,” said Nova Spivack, himself a pioneer of the so-called “semantic web”, which attempts to draw intelligent connections between disparate data. “It does something different. It’s an answer engine rather than a search engine.
Since I wasn't one of the chosen few, I can't predict anything, but I was pottering about in Google's development area, and I found it had "answer functions" buried away in there - not generally released, but there nevertheless, and functioning.
I've been waiting for this for months, since it was announced as per the first post in this thread - however, I have also heard a broadcast lecture by Wolfram, and his arrogance about the search tool he was then developing was frightening.
I remain sceptical. I remember the hooha when Ask.com brought out a new search engine based on new algorythmns a few years ago. I tried it a couple opf times and gave up as it was so biased towards sites with something to sell.
All I want (still) is a search engine that doesn't keep churning out the same sites time after time after time. Can it be that difficult? I really hope Google have cracked this one .......but I am not holding my breath.
Looks like I was right about the stupid media, and the daft headlines about "Google killer" or whatever have already done their damage to Wolfram Alpha.
It is already being hailed as a failure by the some of the meda - because it does not come up with the same answers that Google does (and what use would it be if it did?) - and in a live test on that well-known and highly esteemed forum for testing technology, Radio 4's Today programme, it wasn't able to give comparative figures for the declines of swallows and the North sea haddock live on air.
I noted its difference to Google above, and hinted, not in as many open words, that the stupid masses of the public would not bother to acknowldge that it was not Google, or even the same as Google, and I've been proven right in only a few days
I may have considered Wolfram the man to be too arrogant about his creation, but that doesn't mean it doesn't (or won't develop into something that will) do what he claims, or deserves to be slated by the ignorant. One significant feature is that it probably meets The Fox's criteria for producing one answer to a question.
Try entering "Where did Marilyn Monroe die?" in Wolfram Alpha and Google, and compare the responses
I don't have Google any more unless I open it specifically. I used to have it twice in the headerbars but IE8 come with Microsoft Live Search which is apparently able to tell you that there are no results if you have misstyped something before you have asked it to search. Maybe I have stumbled upon the Holy Grail of Search Engines
I was very underwhelmed by Wolfram Alpha, it seems to be very overhyped. I listened to one report about it and they described it more as a calculator that could produce and handle figures rather than a standard search engine. It was also very American biased so it would produce some really obscure American statistics but fall down when asked about quite simple non-American things.
Unfortunately the biggest problem with Google is the commercialism. It can often be almost impossible to find the website of a company using Google. A search for British Floggle Toggle Manufacturing Ltd will give you companies offering to sell you Floggle Toggles in every town, village and hamlet but is unlikely to give the company website even when it is just the company name with .co.uk or .com on the end.
I can't see the situation improving whilst Google is making lots of money doing this.
Bottom feeders who sell their services to anyone that wants their web site pushed up Google (and every other search engine's rankings) by using the appropriate words and tags within the structure of the page to circumvent fair ranking by the search engines.
While Google et al deactivate and desensitise their engines to the tricks employed by the SEOs, they continue to analyse the engines and revise their methods of pushing thier clients up the ranks without being banned by Google et al.
Far from being responsible for the impossibility of finding a comany website, Google try and make it easier by filtering out SEO tooled pages.
The problem with searching for many business is however not Google, or even the SEOs, but the simple fact that their names are made up of very common words.
You can hardly blame Google (or any other search engine) for the fact that that trying to find the something like the Dunbar Knife and Fork Polishing Company brings up anything but the company at the top of the list, as the incidence of most of those words is so high on other pages across the internet.
There are advanced search techniques offered but no-one bothers with them as far as I can see...
It's a lot easier easier to just jump on the bandwaggon, and blame Google, as usual.
Goggle doesn't make its money from the searches, it makes it from the things that run alongside them, such as sponsored links, affiliates, and adwords that are monetised, and do make the cash registers ring when they are clicked through.
Most of Google's income comes from keyword advertising, the practice of placing sponsored links beside the 'natural' search results for a given term.
Advertisers bid on the search terms in a live auction which means that sponsored links for, say, 'car insurance', are likely to attract a higher fee than something more obscure such as 'string sculptures'.
I'm beginning to get the hang of Wolfram Alpha, and one the things I pulled up was General Motors, who you probably saw mentioned in the news recently after they closed 25% of their dealer network at a stroke etc etc
Give it a try to see their financial record to date (which works for any company listed, if you're interested in others) to watch a company fall from 12 euro to 0.82 euro in a matter of months.
If you wan to try something a little more complicated, then the on-again/off-again fun of the Porsche and Volkswagen family business merger provides another opportunity, again, just feed in the two names to get a picture of the their financial past.
One of Microsoft's more recent acquisitions looks as if it is about to come out into daylight, and might be the magical answer to the Fox's prayers for a better search engine - meet Bing.
You'll have to depend on what those that have been privileged to get their hands on it for early test, and on Microsoft's own video to get a feel for what's coming though, and it's worth noting that even those "in the know" are currently saying it will be anything up to a couple of years before it truly matures and delivers on its promises.
I think thay may be a good sign - firstly because it smacks of realism (everyone promises everything yesterday, and therefore always fails to deliver miserably), and secondly because things always happen faster than promised if they are any good, so we have two measures to judge this offering against.
Although Microsoft is reported to be porting anyone that tries to use the existing Live Search over to Bing, I'm not impressed.
Unless they have yet to create the master search reference database, then Bing has a problem with SeSco - perhaps the embedded Google Map is causing it to be shunned.
I've tried a few subject searched for items that either SeSco is the only decent reference, or there are only two or three other references for on the internet, and for the moment at least, they are simply not being found by Bing.
Even well-known subjects with oodles of web pages about them fail to return any SeSco pages in their number at the moment.
And, as noted on the Forum News, the Admin has had to bar the search engine bots for the time being, so SeSco is going to get a raw deal from Bing!
I realised the other day that I have been binged! Searches show up in the history as Bing despite the screen telling me that it is Microsoft Live Search.
Bing places my website 4th. in a keyword search - below the Polis [booo] but above wikipedia [hurrah!]. What a pity the [3 days late with the news] Evening Times was 1st. and the SNP 2nd. [whit?]
McBing being rather appropriate Fox as the Scottish use of the word 'bing' refers to a heap of dirt and other surplus debris brought up a colliery shaft as a necessary part of winning coal undergound. Many a happy day was spent playing on local bings when I was young. I have a rather interesting pic from 1947 of German PoWs bringing in the harvest with a huge conical shaped bing towering over them. We played on that bing not many years later, the Germans having been sent home I'd imagine.
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