Wolfram|Alpha Computational Knowledge Engine launched over the weekend.  Rather than attempting to be another Google like search engine trying to help us find information on the web, Wolfram|Alpha tries to answer our questions with precision.   Want to know "how many physicians are in the united states?"  730,801 (2000 estimate).  Cool!

Try asking Google the same question and we end up with a list of web pages related to physicians in the United States, but no clear answer to our question.  Need help with your trigonometry homework - x^2 sin(x)?  Thinking about investing in Google Apple Oracle? Wolfram|Alpha provides detailed real answers presented in a clean and accessible interface.

This is not web search as we've come to know it.  Google, Powerset, or OneRiot are helping us find the right needle in the web's massive haystack of information.  Wolfram|Alpha on the other hand is a lot more like HAL 9000, an immensely powerful computer ready to answer your questions.  Well, maybe Wolfram|Alpha isn't quite HAL 9000 today.  As Mark Hopkins put it "... WA is the birth of a new sort of computer – the birth of the mechanical brain."  There will be a new generation of web apps using Wolfram|Alpha under the covers to deliver services that we've only seen in science fiction.