The search engine I have always used myself is the brillant search engine Google, due to it's quickness in searching and general ease of use. I however, like possibly many other users of search engines, can become frustrated when typing in a question like "How many people live in the UK today?" or any similar queries, produces millions of results and webpages and you receive no (or a very vague) answer to your query, despite the millions of results given by the search engine.
These problems may soon become a thing of the past thanks to the new search engine (if you want to call it that), WolframAlpha, which I came across thanks to the technologic programme, Click, which is produced by the BBC. This search engine is designed to give facts about anything you type into the query box, and when I say facts I mean many many facts. The search engine itself is still under development at the moment as there quite a few queries that produce blank results, which will hopefully be ironed out in the future, but the site despite this has some pretty amazing features.
For example whenever you type a date into the database, it gives almost everything you would want to know about that day, from what time the sun set that day to how many days have occured between that day and the present. When you type in a city it gives it's current population, it's location and nearest major cities, and when you type in a name it gives you it's popularity, popularity by year and how many living people are estimated to have that name at present. If you type in two cities or two names together it also automatically compares them for you, e.g. by giving you the distance between the two cities and a graph showing the difference in popularty of the two names over the course of history.
There are also many other features that the search engine can perform. When you type in Hello, it talks back to you (but don't expect a long conversation), typing in "To be or not to be?" produces the rest of the quote instantly, and when you put in a query stating your age, sex and nationality, it tells you how much you count for the total population in the world. Fancy stuff!
These problems may soon become a thing of the past thanks to the new search engine (if you want to call it that), WolframAlpha, which I came across thanks to the technologic programme, Click, which is produced by the BBC. This search engine is designed to give facts about anything you type into the query box, and when I say facts I mean many many facts. The search engine itself is still under development at the moment as there quite a few queries that produce blank results, which will hopefully be ironed out in the future, but the site despite this has some pretty amazing features.For example whenever you type a date into the database, it gives almost everything you would want to know about that day, from what time the sun set that day to how many days have occured between that day and the present. When you type in a city it gives it's current population, it's location and nearest major cities, and when you type in a name it gives you it's popularity, popularity by year and how many living people are estimated to have that name at present. If you type in two cities or two names together it also automatically compares them for you, e.g. by giving you the distance between the two cities and a graph showing the difference in popularty of the two names over the course of history.There are also many other features that the search engine can perform. When you type in Hello, it talks back to you (but don't expect a long conversation), typing in "To be or not to be?" produces the rest of the quote instantly, and when you put in a query stating your age, sex and nationality, it tells you how much you count for the total population in the world. Fancy stuff!
The search engine at the moment can only perform simple and certain tasks, like the ones listed alongside the query box which the engine suggests you try out, and I myself may only use it a few times to get quick and reliable facts that more reliable in comparsion to Wikipedia (especially for information on chemical elements and compounds etc in order to help me with my degree). The site however does give an early sign of promise and I can not wait to see what the site is like in the future when it is, if it ever will be, completed and fully functional. This search engine has my fully support. 
So for anyone out there who experiences the same problems with search engines that I do, keep an eye out for WolframAlpha, and if you want to check it out yourselves go to http://www.wolframalpha.com/ or to keep up with the engine's progress check out it's blog: http://blog.wolframalpha.com/. You can even follow it on it's twitter, facebook or it's RSS Blog pages if you wish or why not try it here for yourself?Until my next blog, keep on blogger fellow bloggers :)
Stay Happy
Cheeky Lamby
xxx
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