The Wolfy Ram

A new toy has hit the internet. It's called Wolfram.

It looks like a search engine, though not a very sexy one. More like one that isn't quite finished yet. But then, in fairness, thats probably because it isn't.

But then looks can be decieving, as this Ram in Wolf's clothing reveals, because it's actually not your typical search engine at all. Instead of spitting out a few million websites, it just tries to answer your question itself.

For example, search for a word like "love" and it will give u the various meanings and synonyms sych as "eff".

Search for a name like "David"and it will let you know that around 3.1 million people called David are alive today, the 5th most common name, and most of them are around 50 years old (10 years younger than the average "Jean").

Search for a date such as a birthday, "15 June 1984", and you'll be told it was a Friday, 9103 days ago, with 17 hours of daylight in Liverpool.

It's feature which will no doubt see it used most often though is it's ability to do kids maths homework. For example, type in "7x+3x^2+sin(x)cos(x)=1" and it will let you know that x = -2.4 or 0.12.

Neat.

MyHeritage.com

Dave had discovered a great new game. MyHeritage.com. Basically, it's a website on which you up load pictures of yourself, friends and family. The site then uses state of the art techniques to decide which 10 celebrities the person in the picture looks most like.

When you think about it, that's pretty damn clever.

To Dave's horror his photo had a 50% match to Justin Timberlake, the celebrity certain people had tried to convince Dave he looked like, which Dave had always found to be nonsense. He apparently also had a 55% match to Sean Hayes, the really gay friend of Will in Will and Grace.

To Dave's amusement, other peoples photos had had some fairly interesting results....

Jean: 56% match to Joseph E. Stiglitz (guy going bald with a beard)
Dave's mum: 53% match to Uri Geller, 50% match to David Schwimmer (Ross from friends)
Dave's dad: 55% match to Whoopi Goldberg, 55% match to the Dalai Lama and 52% match to the Prince of Wales. (How is it even slightly possible for anyone to get that combination?)
Alan: 66% match to Isabella Rossellini
Andrea: 70% match to Madonna, 68% match to Wentworth Miller (guy from Prisonbreak)
Steven: 72% match to Meg Ryan, 63% match to Audrey Tautou and actually 9 of 10 of his matches were women.
Peter: 48% match to Christina Aguilera
Emma: 70% match to Katie Holmes
Anya: 55% match to Naomi Campbell

Aline: 71% match to Britney Spears
Macca: 70% match to Sarah Jessica Parker (the main one from Sex in the City). As with Ste, 9 out of 10 of these matches were women.

‘So’, thought Dave, ‘If I look like Justin Timberlake, I’m taking everyone else down with me.’

Playing with Wiki.

Wikipedia. The greatest invention since sliced bread, which, according to Wikipedia, first came out in July 1928. Endless volumes of infinite knowledge. Dave was fairly certain he would have failed his PhD miserably had it not been around. It could also be used as a wonderfully entertaining game.

"Jing Luo"

Gives Jing Jing Luo, famous chinese composer

"McNeilis"

Gives "Danger Man"

and

"Natsios"

Gives "The Return of The Bastards"

Wikipedia really did know everything.