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WolframAlpha, Google Killer it is Not, but Still Kinda Cool
Posted by: | CommentsWhenever someone creates a search engine the very first things out of someone’s mouth is, “its a Google Killer.” Sad to say, for those who want a Google Killer, this ain’t it. Be that as it may, I have been fooling around with the Wolfram Alpha search engine for some time now and in many ways I am impressed.
First, interface. I like the output pages a lot. I like how it gives you an interpretation of what you wrote since it allows you to see what you screwed up if the search fails… and fail you will.
The hardest part I hear some people have is getting use to the search query. Well honestly, this is not the type of search engine you will use to grab web sites. It is however, a search engine to grab facts. Such as if you type July 1 Canada, Wolfram Alpha will send you back things such as the format for the date, time difference between today and July 1st, sunrise/sunset times for Ottawa, Canadian holidays for the 1st, etc.
But if I type in something such as “how to make chicken soup,” I get an error. If I type that same line in Google, the first return I get is WikiHow, How to Make Chicken Soup: 10 steps. However, if I type in “canned chunky chicken soup” into WolframAlpha I get the average nutrition content of all canned chunky chicken soups, WolframAlpha has in its database.
Wolfram is meant to be a search engine for all factual data in the world. I read recently that it doesn’t handle sports. So I put it to the test. How will I test for factual data for sports? Easy I will ask for baseball stats, if there is any game more meticulous or analytical on its stat keeping than baseball I haven’t heard of it. I typed in Babe Ruth average ERA (since he was a pitcher at the beginning of his career) and I got nothing. I typed in Babe Ruth homeruns still nothing. I typed in just Babe Ruth and I got back his full name, date and place of birth, and date and place of death.
But type in Internet users and it will spit back the estimated total amount of Internet users in the world, the country with the most and the country with the least among other things.
Wolfram won’t be able to tell you who hit more than 30 homeruns in 1947, but it can solve a variety of mathematic equations. Likewise it won’t be able to tell you how to cook chicken soup, but it will tell you the average nutritional information of it. Wolfram is pretty cool for fooling around, but in its current state it remains nothing more than an idle curiosity.
To have a stab at it yourself go here http://www.wolframalpha.com.
Off Topic: Sleep Mode, the Bane of My Existence
Posted by: | CommentsIf I could boil down my long list of grievances towards various software and hardware companies it would probably be the sleep key on my keyboard and what it does to my desktop.
I have a highly specialized keyboard and mouse, ie a piece of crap that does everything I don’t want it to do. It’s wireless, and comes with a long list of features that I rarely use… volume controls, Skype buttons, zoom in/out (I REALLY hate those), pic button (what the heck is that for), LCD functions, and et cetera.
But none is more nefarious than the Sleep button. When my keyboard’s batteries run low I must flip the keyboard and add the fresh little bunny cylinders. Upon said flippage, the sleep button hit the desk and lo and behold it actually goes off, on low batteries.
So there I was, Windows moving into sleep mode on me. I hate sleep mode, why would I ever use it? Hibernate is just fine. So here I am keyboard low on batteries computer in sleep mode, everything dies down. I click on sleep mode again throwing the system into a sleep loop. No way to get out of it, the computer locks up. I have no way of getting out of it.
PANIC STRICKEN I hit reset. Throwing my whole computer into havoc. Upon boot up my user profile has been deleted. Favorites, desktop shortcuts, outlook rules (some 100 rules), email accounts, etc. all lost.
Wonderful. Even with the reshuffling of registry keys I still have about a half day’s worth of work to rebuild everything.
Thanks to my number one pet peeve: Sleep Mode Keys and XP.
Google Chrome Browser Market Share
Posted by: | CommentsThe latest browser which has been introduced to a general Internet audience is the browser named Chrome by Google. It was released to much hype right around the first of September 2008. You can read the original Official Google Blog post here. Keeping in mind that its competitors have been refining their business models and products for (in some cases) over a decade, it seemed like a good time to revisit the product and take a peek at relative market share.
So here are a few different sources and their findings on Chrome’s relative market share:
w3schools.com is a website resource site which has published its browser usage statistics for the past 5 years. You can view the complete statistics here. Coming in as the fourth most popular browser – Chrome commands a 3% share at the site.
Marketshare is a company that specializes in global market share statistics for browsers, search engines, and operating systems. The company has compiled browser statistics since the launch of Chrome and pegs the current adoption rate at slightly less than 1%. You can view the complete page of Chrome statistics here.
A recent article at the Macworld Magazine website pegs the percentage of Internet Explorer users across the Internet at 81.36%. The article uses a figure of just .62% penetration for the Chrome browser in the United States, with a .92% usage rate in Canada.
CNET’s Stephen Shankland recently penned an article entitled, ‘How Widely Used is Chrome? More Than I Expected‘ which tracks the usage of Chrome at CNET.com as it has grown from just 1% of site visitors in September to a fairly respectable (after just 2 months) 3.6% in October.
So the numbers range from less than 1% to 3.6% at CNET. What are the numbers looking like for web hosting companies specifically? UK website hosting company 34sp.com was generous enough to share some recent analytics data for this analysis. For the month of November 2008, the site visitor usage for Chrome at 34sp.com was 3.27% – at the higher end of our usage spectrum. For comparison, I obtained analytics data from another anonymous hosting company for comparison. The comparison hosting firm yielded a 2.7% penetration rate for Chrome – still at the higher end of the scale. Both of the hosting company statistics were generated via Google Analytics.
So while overall market share for the Google Chrome browser is still small, it is growing after just 2 months. Additionally, more technical users (presumably CNET and hosting company related) appear to be adopting the browser at higher overall rates. One piece of anecdotal evidence: I was visiting a hosting company a few days ago, and the CEO was using the Chrome browser exclusively.
This content was written by Derek Vaughan exclusively for WebHostBlog.com.
80k Per Song, Fair? Give me a break
Posted by: Dave | Comments (0)So I am going off the page today. Instead of discussing something within the industry I want to take a look at the latest RIAA court case. It was a retrial of Jammie Thomas-Rasset who shared 24 songs on Kazaa.
In the original trial, the fine was only $222,000 and this time around it is now $1.92 million ($80k a song). Talk about the punishment not fitting the crime.
Let’s break it down shall we.
24 songs is the equivalent of two CDs. This sort of crime would be considered petty theft and a maximum penalty of $500. But wait, this is distributing not simply stealing for one’s own amusement.
So what happens when we get normal teenager type behavior and put it on a forum of millions of users? We get distribution of copyrighted material.
-US Code: Title 17,504 Remedies for infringement
I am no lawyer, but it seems like the law is quite specific on this. Distribution of copyrighted material if the perpetrator has knowledge that it is against the law is punishable of up to $150k…. $1.92 million… $150k. The RIAA argued of course that each song is a separate entity under this law of course instead of lumping them together each was treated separately.
Give me a break. If I steal a CD from a music store I don’t get fined $500 per song, per page of music liners, per piece of plastic that goes into the case, etc. But for the sake of argument lets treat them separate.
A single song’s street value is $1.29 at iTunes (this as good a measure as any I figure). So for there to be $80k damages sustained by the RIAA, each song would have to be distributed 62,015 times… each. What is more likely (though still high) would be 1,000 times each and that would come to $30,960 for the lot. Add court fees and an extra sum on top of that (emotional accountant distress, repayment for time spent agonizing over the problem, etc), and you still don’t hit nearly $2 mil.
Maybe I am over simplifying this (I probably am), but I do not see a reason for a 1.92 million dollar fine to someone who could not ever dream of paying such a high amount.