Tired of your old search engine and looking for something different?  It may not be Wolfram Alpha...

Released earlier this week, www.wolframalpha.com takes firm aim at being a new kind of search engine - although perhaps not a 'google-killer'.

The product is the latest offering from Wolfram Research, the company founded and named after the math and computing genius, Stephen Wolfram - best known for the software 'Mathematica'. 

Wolfram Alpha isn't a search engine as such.  Self described as a 'computational knowledge engine', it doesn't respond to a user's search text by displaying a list of relevant web page.  Rather, Wolfram Alpha relies upon it's own database of facts and figures - quantitative data which is 'computable.'

So, how does it all work out?

Typing the words "Apple, IBM" into Wolfram Alpha is interpreted by the software as a request for information on the two companies - resulting in a comparison between both organisations - just the facts. The same text input to Google returns a page of web links - at the time of publication of this new article the top result was a page on Apple Inc.'s website regarding their partnership with IBM.

Wolfram Alpha aspires to 'collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything.'  So, Alpha sounds brilliant if you're working with stats, equations, formulas and other types of raw data - but if you need to order a pizza, or find an opinion on the latest film showing at your local cinema then Google looks still firmly rooted as being the search engine of choice.

US$6 cooker made from a cardboard box wins the FT Climate Challenge prize...

"It's the simplest idea I could find," says Jon Bohmer, the man behind the 'Kyoto Box'.

London's Financial Times newspaper and Hewlett Packard sponsored the US$75,000 Climate Challenge prize - which was organised by Forum for the Future, a UK sustainable development charity.

The Kyoto Box is named after the 1992 Earth Summit Kyoto Protocol which strives to limit and stabilise the concentration of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere in order to combat long-term dangers to global climate.

A simple design...

it's made of two interlined cardboard boxes, foil lining the interior, paint and straw for further insulation and heat capture and all topped off with an acrylic cover that lets the sun's rays in then traps the heat.

For some of the poorest people in the world, the invention promises to reduce the reliance on wood and charcoal for cooking food and boiling water.

Bohmer, the inventor of the Kyoto Box plans to use the prize money to roll-out mass trials of the product in 10 countries, including South Africa, India and Indonesia.

Bohmer envisions the box being given away for free to those who need it.  And if the Kyoto Box is eligible for carbon credits, then it may result in a net profit for the individuals operating it, enabling them to replace the solar cooker with another within 4-5 years.

Social networking and micro-blogging: not just for giggles and gossip anymore...

Student anger in Moldova boiled over this week following a national election in which victory was declared by the currently ruling Communist Party led by President Vladimir Voronin.

Amidst widespread allegations of vote-fixing, the social networking and micro-blogging service Twitter (alongside Facebook and SMS text messaging) was used to organise protests of an estimated 15,000 students in Chisinau, the capital earlier this week.  Students trashed the Moldovan parliament and other government buildings prior to police moving in to restore order.

Critics assert that Twitter is simply publishing by the self-obsessed

While some not insignificant portion of Twitter content content is undoubtedly trivial and banal it cannot be denied that the social network has the potential to have a powerful political effect - as events in Moldova have demonstrated.

In the past social networking has been used to break news and inform users during the 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, Barack Obama's US presidential campaign, and implemented by the Los Angeles Fire Department as a source of public information during the 2007 California wildfires.

Just enough room for you and your date...

Today, Segway Inc, in cooperation with the mammoth financially troubled US car-maker, General Motors, revealed their new prototype PUMA vehicle (Personal Urban Mobility & Accesibility).

The PUMA promises to expand on the capabilities of Segway's earlier product, the Personal Transporter (PT) which was released to the market in 2002. 

The original PT's maximum speed was around 20 km/h - and on a single charge it could cover a distance of 25-40 km, depending upon terrain, prior to requiring a nap near an electrical socket for 8-10 hours to recharge.  The PUMA prototype exceeds this by boasting speeds up to 56 km/h and a maximum distance of 55 km prior to recharging.

GM and Segway have not yet announced plans to bring the vehicle to market.  However, potentially, the PUMA could be a genuinely viable - and green - alternative for city transportation.  The fuel costs are certainly much cheaper than running a car, as when it's lithium battery is fully charged the vehicle can travel it's maximum 56 km distance at a cost of US$ 0.60

The announcement cast a ray of hope over GM, the gloomy auto giant.  A little over a week prior, President Obama had admonished the auto-maker to "...restructure, to modernise, and to make themselves more competititve".  Obama as well, had exerted pressure to oust Rick Wagoner as GM's chairman and chief executive.