As many other Internet users I stumbled across WolframAlpha some days ago. Wolfram Alpha defines itself as computational knowledge engine. The concept for using knowledge alpha can be seen as combination between Google and Wikipedia, but it uses quite an different approach.
It is an Encyclopedia, which tries to combine different information sources and facts matematically to produce a piece of systematic knowledge. answers from Wolfram Alpha can be combined in an arbitrary way. I have tried some example how geographical facts and questions can be combine to produce more or less meaningful knowledge.
1. Geocoding:
- To locate any country should be possible.
- where is austria? (possible, interpretation as location, visualisation with maps)
- Finding US States possible, but it is not possible to find smaller districts in other countries
- where is california? where is bavaria? (partly possible, interpretation as location, visualisation with maps)
- Finding cities is possible (starting with ~5000 inhabitants)
- where is boston? where is villach? (possible, interpretation as location, visualisation with maps)
- Find your current location
- where am i? (possible, interpretation as location, visualisation with maps)
- Locate Points of Interest (POI)
- where is golden gate bridge? where is mt. everest? where is bodensee? (possible, interpretation as location, visualisation with maps)
- Addresses
- where is 5th avenue in new york? (not possible)
- Reverse geocoding
- 55 deg 45′ N, 37 deg 37′ E (only shows country)
- ZIP Codes
- ZIP 60637 (USA only)
2. Routing:
- Flight distance between counties
- austria to denmark (possible, interpretation as “to”, visualisation with maps)
- Distance between cities
- salzburg to graz barcelona to singapore (possible, interpretation as “to”, visualisation with maps)
- Distance between Addresses
- (not possible)
3. Others:
- Projections
- Compare cities
- Elevation Data
You can find some more suggestions about places and geography on their examples site. The embedded video shows an talk from Stephan Wolfram talking about WolframAlpha.
Unfortunately it was not possible for me to generate thematic maps with wolfram alpha (for example: all countries population map). Wolframs computational knowledge engine was officially started this Monday and can be accessed via: http://www.wolframalpha.com/
