This has been my problem during testing. I'm very impressed with the quality of the curated data, but getting at it seems very hit-and-miss. I gave the exdample a week or two back of searching on 'Orson Welles' - you can ask 'who directed [OW movie]' and it'll tell you, but 'what movies did OW direct' (and yes I tried many variants) always gets you an error.
In this respect it feels like the sort of thing that has always annoyed me about expert systems: it's useful to the extent that you are already familiar with what data is curated therein, and want a handy way to look it up, but rather frustrating for surfing and exploration. I do like it...but I can't help sharing some people's view that it's sort of an ad for Mathematica.
It will find a use as citation source - you can embed statistics or factual info in your web page and reference Alpha, in relative comfort that the data there is factually correct. On the other hand, the lack of specificity in the citation info means it won't be quite adequate for academic use, at least not just yet. Might be that its best market will be among high school students who will a) buy Mathematica later and b) grow up with Alpha as past generations did with their slide rules or TI calculators, and stick with it as it evolves.
I didn't take time to play with the API yet - superficially it looks flexible, but I'm only a hobby coder. Much depends on where Wolfram draws the line between openness and proprietary use.
In this respect it feels like the sort of thing that has always annoyed me about expert systems: it's useful to the extent that you are already familiar with what data is curated therein, and want a handy way to look it up, but rather frustrating for surfing and exploration. I do like it...but I can't help sharing some people's view that it's sort of an ad for Mathematica.
It will find a use as citation source - you can embed statistics or factual info in your web page and reference Alpha, in relative comfort that the data there is factually correct. On the other hand, the lack of specificity in the citation info means it won't be quite adequate for academic use, at least not just yet. Might be that its best market will be among high school students who will a) buy Mathematica later and b) grow up with Alpha as past generations did with their slide rules or TI calculators, and stick with it as it evolves.
I didn't take time to play with the API yet - superficially it looks flexible, but I'm only a hobby coder. Much depends on where Wolfram draws the line between openness and proprietary use.