The iPhone app for Wolfram Alpha (iTunes store link) got approved by Apple surprisingly quickly, I was told in a breathless e-mail from Wolfram PR on Sunday. But the real surprise was the price: The app is $49.99.
The rationale is twisted.
"It's less than half the price of a graphing calculator, but it does more," the rep told me. By the way, "price of a graphing calculator" is a calculation that Wolfram Alpha can't compute.
For much, much less than the price of a graphing calculator, or $0.00, you can point your iPhone's Safari browser at Wolframalpha.com and have full access to the service for free. Divide by that, Wolfie.
Also, the $49.99 price doesn't get you an actual standalone graphing calculator, since the app doesn't work when it doesn't have a Web connection.
The Wolfram Alpha iPhone app makes it easier to enter calculation queries.
(Credit: Screenshot by Rafe Needleman/CNET)Now, to be fair, the iPhone app is a much better way to use Wolfram than the Web site, for a few reasons.
The Wolfram Web site renders all answers, even text, as GIF graphics, which means that text doesn't automatically wrap, or even scale well, on the iPhone's small screen. The app fixes that, and results render nicely on the iPhone. Also, entering complex queries using numbers and symbols on the iPhone's standard keyboard is a real drag, but the Wolfram app has a special keyboard that gives fast access to the symbols you'll need if you're a heavy Wolfram user.
There are several other nice features. You can bookmark queries, e-mail them, and Twitter them. They really do make the Wolfram app very handy for frequent users, and it's those power Wolframers that the app is targeted at. If you need it, then the "price of 12 lattes from Starbucks," which I'm told is another way the team is thinking of the price, is as they might say in the halls of some physics departments, trivial.
But as they would tell you in the economics department, you're being taken for a ride.
Also, Wolfram Alpha doesn't know the price of 12 Starbucks lattes either, but it did tell me the stock price of SBUX and, to its credit, if you enter "12 lattes" as a query, you'll get all sorts of nutritional information, such as calorie content for the 12 lattes (1,654), carbohydrates (61 percent of daily recommended intake), and cholesterol (162 mg).
Just like the dozen lattes, this app is hard to swallow.
Previously: Wolfram Alpha opens API to developers.
Say what you will about Wolfram Alpha, the creators are hard at work trying to drum up interest in the site.
On Tuesday, the WA crew launched a number of updates to its service, some of which I tested. Now the team's Thursday blog points you to the many "cool tools" you can use to access the site--buttons, widgets, gadgets, and more. You can grab them from the Wolfram Alpha download page, where you'll find the tools organized by operating system and browser. I took them all for a spin to see how they fared.
Toolbars
Wolfram Alpha toolbars are available for Firefox 2 and 3 and Internet Explorer 6 or higher. I installed separate toolbars on both Firefox 3 and IE 8. After setup, the toolbar popped up displaying a text field where I could type my search term directly.
Since Wolfram Alpha's forte is mathematical questions, I asked the question: "What is the value of pi?" (I'm sure we all remember from high school that pi is the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter.) As expected, the traditional WA search told me it was 3.14 followed by more digits than I cared to count. So far, so good.
Then I experimented with the other toolbar buttons and learned that each one pointed me to different results on the same question. One button points to a page called the Wolfram Demonstration project to illustrate mathematical concepts. Here I could see the value of pi in action by watching a 3D globe with changing dimensions. A button for the Mathematical Documentation center showed me links to complex equations involving pi. Buttons for Wolfram MathWorld and Wolfram Research linked to mathematical and scientific articles on pi. More than I'd ever want to know about pi, but I know it'd make my old algebra teacher smile.
Wolfram Alpha helps me with pi.
Windows Deskband
The Deskband installed a Wolfram Alpha search tool on my Windows taskbar. Here the same options were available as with the browser toolbar but conveniently accessible from my desktop. Another handy tool.
Windows Desktop gadget
I next tried the Windows Vista Desktop gadget, which plopped a Wolfram Alpha search field on my Vista sidebar. This came without links to the other sources that were accessible from the toolbar, so I didn't find it quite as useful.
Search engine add-ins
This tool added Wolfram Alpha to my browser's list of default search providers. Quick and easy to install, and it worked well in both Firefox and IE.
iGoogle gadget
I use iGoogle as my personalized home page and rely on all of the gadgets available, so I liked this one. The Wolfram Alpha gadget is similar to the sidebar gadget--displaying a single text field for my query.
Internet Explorer 8 accelerator
I installed the Wolfram Alpha Accelerator for Internet Explorer 8. Accelerators let you select text on a Web page to quickly search on it using different sources. Most of the text I found on a typical Web site didn't lend itself to a Wolfram Alpha computational search, so I found little value here.
Mac OS X Dashboard widget
I couldn't test the OS X Dashboard widget because I don't yet have have a Mac. (No comments from Mac users please; it's on my shopping list.) But it should work similarly to its Windows counterpart. I did get the screenshot below from my colleague Stephen Shankland.
Wolfram Alpha Mac widget
Some of the tools did help me see more value in Wolfram Alpha. Of course, they also serve to promote the site, but that's okay by me as long as they work. Of all the downloads, the WA toolbar and deskband demonstrated more of the scope and versatility of Wolfram Alpha by pointing me to different sources--something I didn't know about just from using the Web site.
If you've casually been using Wolfram Alpha, but don't want to give up your Google addiction reliance, there's hope for you yet. A new Firefox extension lets you keep using Google, while showing Wolfram Alpha results on the side of the page.
I've been using it all morning and it's a nice addition if you're a search enthusiast. Your Google results come in just as quickly as they usually do, while the Wolfram ones catch-up on the side. This makes it a good way to test some of the limitations of the new search engine, as it only covers so many topics. My favorite use for it is to pull up nutritional information for fast food and cast lists for movies. Both are activities that usually require going off the results page to find the information I was looking for, whereas Wolfram simply grabs and displays it in an orderly fashion.
The only drawback I've run into with this extension is that it can clip off the bottom of the Wolfram Alpha results unless you've got Google set to show 20 or more search results per page. On some of the longer entries this this means you're not seeing potentially important information. On the plus side, there's a quick link to redo the search in Wolfram Alpha, in a different browser tab.
Note: This extension is experimental, which means you need to be registered with Mozilla's add-ons directory to install it in your browser.
Installing the Wolfram Alpha Google extension for Firefox adds Wolfram Alpha search results next to every Google query.
(Credit: CNET)A correction was made to this story. See below for details.
Testing Opera 10 alpha confirms it can boast that it's the second browser in development that is fully compliant with the Acid3 benchmarks. It's also markedly faster than Opera 9.62 at processing JavaScript, but it's half as fast as the fastest Web browser currently available.
Opera 10 alpha is Acid3-standards compliant.
(Credit: CNET Networks)On both Windows and Mac OS, it was no surprise to see the Acid3 standards test come up 100 out of 100 since that was the big news from Opera Software earlier today. The browser is also three times faster than the current stable release, with the SunSpider Java test clocking in at 5,740.8 milliseconds. That compares very favorably to Opera 9.62, which I benchmarked at 15,468.8 ms, but is still slower than the Firefox 3.1 beta. Mozilla's latest developer build zips in at 2,787.6 ms when running its new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine.
The majority of the changes in this Opera alpha release are aimed at developers. The average user will rarely, if ever, come into contact with them. That doesn't mean they're not important, though, with further support for CSS3. These changes include sourcing fonts, transparency rendering, animation framerates, and two key evolutions in Opera Dragonfly. You can use the DOM inspector to determine the source of traffic, useful for Ajax debugging, and the ability to edit attributes in real-time.
There are three minor but important user-level changes. It's hard to believe that HTML support in Opera Mail was missing before now, but you'll now be able to see all those holiday e-cards within Opera. There's also a spell-checker rolled in for text fields, not just e-mail.
Opera 10 features an auto-install option for updates.
(Credit: CNET Networks)The last new feature, automatic program updates, could be potentially risky. Certainly in Firefox it would likely lead to the disabling of many extensions, although there's not much of a chance of that happening in Opera with its smaller developer community. The bigger concern is one of control: do you choose which version of a program you get to use, or does the publisher of the program? As annoying as Apple's update monitor and nag screen are, they don't force users to update; you can opt out.
It took a little hunting to find, but the default setting in Opera 10 seems to be the more standard notification behavior. If you'd like to tweak your update settings, go to Tools, Preferences, choose the Advanced tab on the right and then Security from the list of options. The Opera update drop-down menu allows you to change the default to "Don't check for updates" or "Automatic updates".
The big news of the standards compliance will only take Opera so far if other browsers match that mark. It'll be interesting to see, as Google Chrome introduces extensibility, whether Opera will go that route or if it'll try to maintain its niche market as a solid and fast out-of-the-box browser. However, Opera 10 was surprisingly stable during a half-day of testing for an alpha release, crashing not even once.
Correction: This story initially gave the wrong name of the Java test I ran. It is called SunSpider.
Thirteen-year-old Opera has been the perennial underdog in the browser wars, but Opera 10 alpha brings some unexpected firepower to the field. Unlike Google Chrome, Firefox 3, or any other browser on the market except for Safari 4 Developer Preview, Opera 10 will comply fully with the Acid3 test, according to the Norwegian publisher.
Opera 10 alpha introduces a text field spell-checker.
(Credit: Opera Software, Inc.)Expected to be available now for public testing, Opera 10 is powered by an update to its proprietary rendering engine. Presto 2.2 is supposed to be 30 percent faster than Presto 2.1, the engine driving Opera 9.5. Presto 2.2, says the company, will be the basis for future versions of its mobile browsers as well as the desktop editions.
In addition to the engine improvements, the big news is that Opera 10 apparently scores 100 out of 100 on the Acid3 testing Web site. The Web Standards Project created the Acid tests to check a range of linking and rendering abilities in browsers to encourage a standard baseline for coding. Theoretically, sticking to the test rules should ensure that Web sites can be seen properly on any browser, while reducing development costs.
For comparison, Firefox 3.0.4 scores 71/100, while Firefox 3.1 beta 1 hits 89/100. Google Chrome 0.4 earns 79/100, while Internet Explorer 7 struggles at 14. These scores might be slightly different from the ones in the article linked to because of recent modifications in each browser.
Similar to the development build of Safari 4, Opera 10 alpha doesn't have many new features--yet. The alpha is expected to introduce on-the-fly spell checking for text fields, support for HTML formatting in Opera Mail, and an auto-update feature to force browser updates. It's not clear at the time of writing whether this update is something users can opt out of.
Although it's not intended for public consumption, a new build of Firefox 3 Alpha 5 (code name Gran Paradiso) is available for download from Mozilla. In this release, add-ons created for Firefox 2 may not work. For end users, Firefox 2 remains the latest public version. The final public release for Firefox 3 is not expected until the fall of 2007. See a slide show of Firefox 3 Alpha 5 here.
Intended for developers and beta testers, Firefox 3 Alpha 5 features a new rendering engine. The Gekko 1.9 rendering engine will introduce some changes. For example, Firefox 3 will no longer support Windows 95, 98, and Me, and for the Mac OS X, versions 10.2 and earlier will not longer be supported. There will also be numerous changes made to the Document Object Model (DOM) in Gekko 1.9, which will affect developers more than end users. Also, there will be changes in the way Firefox renders frames within its display and the way object tags are handled, as well as changes in event threading.
What's truly exciting about this alpha release is a feature called Places. As first seen in Firefox 2 Alpha 1, then temporarily tabled, Places returns in Firefox 3 Alpha 5--kind of. The functionality exists in this release for a new side panel that allows you to control your bookmarks, RSS subscriptions, and browser history in one convenient space. Places uses the open-source SQLite database, giving it greater extensibility and the ability to back up and restore bookmarks; however, this also means it's incompatible with earlier Firefox bookmarks.
Also new in this build are Web-based content handlers, greater search engine keyword support, a new password manager, something called Extension Manager (EM), the beginnings of an intentity network, better integration with Mac OS X look and feel, some offline applications support, and site specific preferences.
Also included is an early look at FUEL (Firefox User Extension Library), a JavaScript library designed to make it easier for extension developers by minimizing XPCOM formality and using more "modern" JavaScript ideas.
Also, there's help for cross-site scripting, when the browser makes a request for a page not found on the target server. This is a favorite technique for criminal hackers. Mozilla proposes that Firefox receive a response if the server explicitly allows other sites to access pages, otherwise the browser will throw away the response and throw an exception.
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