PDA

View Full Version : Not really a blog but might be interest.



JJackson
11-11-2009, 01:03 PM
I am going to to give you two links to sites which are really extending the function of search engines.
Wolfram Alpha (http://www.wolframalpha.com) is a search engine with the maths program Mathimatica underlying it. It can be used to perform calculations but also returns data from numerous linked data source. If you enter a simple term like Gold you will not get links but a page about gold more reminiscent of of a Wikipedia page but generated on the fly with current market price etc. They have a video showing the kinds of things you can do with it. The bad news is this is a very long term project and many of the mined databases are rather US centric at this stage.

The second site is www.gapminder.org (http://www.gapminder.org) which allows you to access an enormous amount of data graphically with four variables. Two are largely pre-set - countries and time - with the x and y axis variables. Again there are a lot of lectures given using the software which give an idea of what it is capable of. (not all functions are available in the online version). The graph can be 'run' to show change over time.
950