Wolfram Alpha, the revolutionary search engine that calculates and computes your queries, instead of directing you to other sources of information has gone live from May 15.

We had recently reported about this in one of our Future Watch articles. Back then, since the service was a closed beta and we had some time to test the search engine, here are our first impressions of it.

The tool (it's more of a tool, less a search engine) is the brainchild of Stephen Wolfram, a computer scientist from Britain. The principle difference between Wolfram Alpha and other conventional search engines is the fact that instead of "looking for" information on the web, it wades through huge databases of information to throw accurate results and answers to queries, instead of a link where you "might" receive an answer to your query.

With Wolfram Alpha, you can compute something seemingly simple as the distance between two places or something seemingly complex as the current position of the Andromeda galaxy and details regarding it. You can even enter a mathematic formula or calculate. The answers are usually backed with extensive charts and graphs giving the service more of an encyclopedia-ic feel. But then, what would make people use this one instead of Wikipedia, for example? People would prefer Wolfram Alpha over it because Wikipedia cannot process calculations real time!

The permutations and combinations of results you can leverage out of Wolfram Alpha are mind boggling. More often than not, if you are looking for something very comprehensive, it is likely that one page of Wolfram Alpha results will throw more bits of information than any other source you currently have. Simply put, this one is your best bet if you are on a mission to complete a research paper or even if you simply want accurate information for a college project.

Ever since we first heard of the service there were attempts to herald it as the next Google killer. Remember Cuil? The fact is that Wolfram Alpha is a far cry from your traditional search engine. The "Computational Knowledge Engine" as Dr. Wolfram calls it, is intended to be an information aggregator and a one stop resource of information instead of, as mentioned earlier, a place from where you would be directed to other places where you have chances of finding your required information. The downside of this is that, if you try to use this as a traditional search engine, you'd be disappointed.

Wolfram Alpha, as the name suggests, is still in its Alpha stages and you might come across some jerky issues whilst using the service. It is completely free as of now but seems to have plans to go "professional" with extra features in the near future.