I had my first play with WolframAlpha this morning. I was watching the launch on justin.tv and saw the search url people we using. By doing this I got around the opening soon window ... Hope that's ok. Anyway very cool. Sorry for the poor video really just recording my play. The big thing is knowing what you can do and how to approach searching. Was very fast until they started load testing and then things started timing out. Cool as a first experience though. To View More >>

As I watched an introductory video for the WolframAlpha launch, my memory raced back to when I first saw the internet in the early 90's and told my wife how it was going to "change the world". WolframAlpha isn't a search engine like Google, it's something completely different. In my opinion there is a place for both as they do things differently ... but if this gets hold this will change the world. It's offers a completely revolutionary way of looking at data and for the average person to explore relationships. As Danny and I discussed today, we can in our heads imagine how the search works at To View More >>

I was walking the dog this morning and it occurred to me how much of the last week has been full of paradox . In no particular order ... 1, Do you find as often as I do that food that's good for you isn't usually as good for your wallet as food that's not? 2, Business is like a snow ball rolling down a hill: it grows faster the bigger it gets. So why don't we focus on getting the small snow ball right and rolling first? 3, I was shocked to realise a while back, and was reminded often last week, that the information (learning) we most need to hear is often the stuff that irritates us the most. To View More >>

Google is one of those companies I would like to avoid if I could. Not for any rational reason, just that they have become all pervasive and I want to slow them down. Like search, however, most if not all Google apps work really well and are hard to beat. Google Reader is no exception. To understand what it does, you first need an understanding of RSS; if you don't have that, click here. I follow a lot of blogs as I am interested in a number of things, but visiting them directly is impractical and most other RSS clients just didn't stack up. The reader works, so here is an introduction from an To View More >>