New world order equals to googles world.

For some odd reason google.com is the only place left where human have to think, where they only think to make such things that will help rest of the world not to think.

After seeing some of these video, I came to conclusion that soon google will ask you not to even wake up and just program your brain for the right thing on the right time and you would to go Switzerland for your honeymoon with out a wife without buying tickets or making arrangement for visa even not worrying about packing you luggage.

Now this is something I had been expecting long time google was the only one to bring it out.

No words for this.

Where I'm only trying to cope up with the new invention, they are not slowing down with new bees. So I guess I would just wait and relax to see what's coming in the picture next.

Google to launch its own operating system

The T-Mobile G1 Android-powered phone, the first cell phone with the operating system designed by Google Inc.

Google has announced plans for a personal computer operating system on its official blog. This will be another clash between the Internet search king and software giant Microsoft.

Chrome was launched in September but has failed to enjoy the spectacular success of Google's search engine. This was noted in the blog when the company stated that ‘the operating systems that browsers (Chrome) run on were designed in an era where there was no web’ thus the operating system is dubbed a ‘natural extension of Google Chrome.’

The browser has captured just a tiny share of a market dominated by Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Microsoft's new search engine Bing was launched in a bid to hit back at Google's gains in the search market, but still lags behind its rival. Web analytics firm StatCounter said last week that Bing had carved out an 8.23 percent share of the US search market in June. By contrast, however, Google continued to dominate the search market with a huge 78.48 percent share last month.

Google already has an operating system - Android.

While Android is only used for mobile phones at the moment, the open-source operating software with Internet capabilities has showcased Google's obvious interest in expanding beyond its search engine base. However, the blog stressed that Android and the upcoming Chrome OS were different but also acknowledged that ‘there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android will overlap.’

The move is "our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be," Google said in a statement posted late Tuesday.

US telecom carrier giant T-Mobile said last month the latest version of a touch-screen smartphone featuring Android would be available in August. It is being seen as Google's answer in the highly competitive smartphone market to the newly released Apple iPhone 3GS, the Palm Pre and the latest Blackberrys.

Google rush Farsi versions

Google now works in 42 different languages

Search giant Google has stepped up work to release a tool that will translate Farsi into English and vice-versa.

The company told the BBC it was speeding up the project because of the huge interest in what was currently going on in Iran.

At the same time, the world's biggest social networking site, Facebook, is launching a Persian version.

Both companies say they hope their efforts will improve access to information and communication.

"There is a huge amount of interest in events in Iran and people want to know what is going on inside and outside the country," Google's principal scientist, Franz Och, told the BBC.

"Providing access to information across language boundaries should be very helpful. It's one more tool that Persian speakers can use to communicate directly to the world and vice-versa."

Facebook announced that it had also accelerated work on its Farsi translation.

In a blog posting, the company noted that people around the world had been using Facebook to exchange information about the aftermath of the Iranian election, but that most of that had not been in English.

"Much of the content created and shared on Facebook related to these events has been in Persian - the native language of Iran - but the users have had to navigate the site in English or other languages," it said.

As a result, Facebook has now made the entire site available in a test version of Persian, "so Persian speakers inside of Iran and around the world can begin using it in their native language".

Challenges

Both companies stress privately that there is no political motivation in what they are doing, and that their main goal is to facilitate communication and the flow of information.

Google's stated mission is to organise the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful. To that end, it is already available in 41 other languages from Arabic to Spanish and from Danish to Vietnamese.

Native speakers helped Facebook with its Farsi translation

Mr Och said he and his team had been working hard over the past few days to rush the Farsi service out. As a result, it was about 80% perfect.

"This is done using machine translation which, in general, is not as good as human translation and so, for some languages, the quality is mixed," explained Mr Och.

"With Spanish to English we get a nice translation, but for others it's much harder because we don't have so much data from which we can build our systems.

"Farsi is one of those where the translation is not as good but we hope to make it better relatively soon."

Likewise Facebook has said its translated site is not a polished product but "we felt it was important to help people communicate rather than wait".

However the company said a lot of its success in being able to go live with what it has done is down to the more than 400 Persian speakers who submitted thousands of individual translations of the site.

Both companies are looking to perfect their work and said they welcomed help from Persian speakers.

Milestone

Much has been written about the role of the internet and social networking sites in spreading news, video, pictures and information about the post-election chaos.

YouTube is showing video from the streets of Tehran

These latest moves to provide Farsi translations have been praised by the Personal Democracy Forum, which looks at how technological advances and global internet trends are reinventing politics, democracy, society and government.

"The ability to translate the information flow that is going on at the moment into Farsi will benefit everybody on both sides of this battle," the Forum's co-founder, Andrew Rasiej, told the BBC.

"What these efforts do is add to the bigger idea which is that as people are more and more connected, the basic human right of free speech spreads with it.

"This is another milestone in allowing human beings to communicate with each other and break down the barriers that might have prevented them from understanding each other due to language," said Mr Rasiej.

"We hope we will have a positive impact," said Google's Mr Och.

Source: new.bbc.co.uk

Google wants developers to ride its Wave

‘In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it,’ Rasmussen wrote in a blog post at the California Internet giant’s website. — File Photo

SAN FRANCISCO: Google on Thursday encouraged software developers to ride into the future of email with a project called ‘Wave,’ which opens inboxes to text, video, pictures, maps and even social network feeds.

‘Wave’ expands the capabilities of email to let people communicate and work together in real-time with text, photos, videos, maps, and more, according to Google software engineering manager Lars Rasmussen.

‘In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it,’ Rasmussen wrote in a blog post at the California Internet giant’s website.

‘Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. You see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave.’ A ‘wave’ prototype built by a five-person team ‘holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office’ for months was previewed at a Google developers conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

‘After more than two years of expanding our ideas, our team, and our technology, we’re very eager to return and see what the world might think,’ Rasmussen wrote.

A Wave software kit was provided to developers at the conference.
Wave allows for collaboration and communication by letting people send out pictures, messages, or videos that can be built on or modified as they stream from recipient to recipient.

Waves can be rewound to see how exchanges evolved, according to Google.
‘Developers are going to see the potential of Google Wave as a platform; we hope they’ll leap on it,’ Wave engineer Adam Schuck said in an interview posted at the US firm’s website.

‘They’ll be able to integrate it with existing systems they use today, or produce new tools that allow people to improve and manage their communications.’ The computer code for Wave will be open source, meaning developers are free to modify it as they wish.

‘We’re inviting developers to add all kinds of cool stuff before our public launch,’ Rasmussen wrote.

No launch date for Wave has been specified. Rasmussen and his brother, Jens, founded an online mapping firm bought by Google in 2004. The brothers’
technology went into Google’s free Internet map service.

Silicon Valley analyst Rob Enderle said that while the Wave goal is feasible, building a central station for various online photo, video, text and social networking feeds presents complex challenges.

Such a project also calls for cooperation from an array of technology firms, some of them Google rivals, according to Enderle.

‘You start throwing these complex things together and things start breaking,’ Enderle said. ‘And, Google has not shown an ability to drive the kind of collaboration it would take to make it happen.’ Google Wave has solved ‘a bunch of stuff that has traditionally been very hard’ such as real-time collaboration and hosted data, according to team engineer Casey Whitelaw.

‘Developers won’t have to think about all of that, they’ll be able to just build their app and go,’ Whitelaw said in the interview.

‘The primary ideas are that everything is live, and everything is editable.’The Wave team in Sydney held weekly ‘team huddles’ that evolved to include theme songs, prizes, and one member’s quest to ‘help us develop our chocolate palate beyond M&M’ candies, according to Whitelaw.

‘Rather than try to anticipate every possible use it will be put to, we’ve made it open and extensible so developers can come up with what they think is cool and useful,’ Whitelaw said of Wave. — AFP

Source: Dawn.com

Google dropped idea of buying newspaper: CEO

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/sci-tech/16-google-dropped-idea-of-buying-newspaper-ceo-hs-05

Google considered buying a newspaper but dropped the idea, the head of the Internet search giant said in an interview with the Financial Times published on

WASHINGTON: Google considered buying a newspaper but dropped the idea, the head of the Internet search giant said in an interview with the Financial Times published on Wednesday.

Google chairman and chief executive officer Eric Schmidt said the California company had also considered using its charitable arm, Google.org, to support news businesses seeking non-profit status but was now unlikely to do so.

He told the FT that Google had looked at buying a newspaper but concluded that potential acquisition targets were too expensive or carried excessive liabilities.

The Mountain View, California-based search and advertising company, he said, was ‘trying to avoid crossing the line’ between technology and content.

Instead, Google was working with The Washington Post and other newspapers to improve their online products and with publishers to make their websites ‘work better’ for online advertising, Schmidt said.

He told the FT that ‘clever ideas’ about sheltering newspapers in non-profit structures had been suggested to Google.org but ‘are unlikely to happen without some massive, massive set of corporate bankruptcies.’US newspapers have been grappling with a steep drop in print advertising revenue, steadily declining circulation and the migration of readers to free news online.

The FT said Schmidt would not comment on reports this month that Google had been approached about buying a 20 percent stake in the New York Times Co. owned by hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners.

It said Schmidt played down industry calls for Google to increase the amount of revenue it shared with news organisations whose content appears on Google News, saying it would have to take money from ‘another pocket’ to do so.

The Google CEO also said it was highly unlikely that people would pay for general news on the Web when so much was available for free.

Subscriptions and micro-payments would work for specialised content, he said, but were unlikely to do so for general news such as political reporting.

Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. is among the media groups which have announced plans recently to begin charging readers on the Internet.

The FT said Schmidt, whose name has been mentioned as a possible candidate for governor of California, also ruled out any political ambitions.

‘I can assure you I'm not going to run for politics,’ he said. ‘There is no second life after Google.’ — AFP

. — AFP/File Photo

Google apology for slow service .

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8051262.stm

Google said the outage lasted for about an hour Google apologised for what it called a "traffic jam" that resulted in slow service or even interruption on the internet search giant's main page. Gmail and Google's news site were also reported as "sluggish" or unavailable to millions of users for about an hour. This is not the first time the company has faced such problems. "An error in one of our systems caused us to direct some of our traffic through Asia," said Urs Hoelzle, a spokesman for the company. "As a result, about 14% of our users experienced slow services or even interruptions," he said. "We've been working hard to make our services ultrafast and 'always on', so it's especially embarrassing when a glitch like this one happens. "We're very sorry that it happened, and you can be sure that we'll be working even harder to make sure that a similar problem won't happen again," said Mr Hoelzle, Google's senior vice president of operations. Sympathy The outage has called into question the reliability of web-based services. Google's "efforts to have some of their services, in particular their apps, and to a less extent Gmail, treated as serious business services that one can use instead of locally installed and maintained apps could be seriously undermined by a major outage like that," said Ezra Gottheil, an analyst with Technology Business Research. Early reports claimed a denial of service attack was to blame "This is bad news for Google's efforts to build up Apps, and to a less extent, Gmail, as critical business tools. If the mighty Google can stumble, then who can be trusted?" Mr Gottheil told Computerworld.com Other industry watchers say the interruption might cause businesses to reconsider using these services. "Maybe companies that are thinking about a cloud strategy - such as Google Apps - need to look into backup clouds" said Sam Diaz, a senior editor at technology news site ZDNet. On the microblogging service Twitter the service failure became a major topic of discussion. "Funny how something we lived without for the longest time is suddenly something we can't live without," tweeted simonnet. While k_sasha tweeted "Sympathies to the Google servers. Happens to everyone. But this is why the world needs more than one search engine." Napolebsis posted "The Google outage endorses my recent decision to move some services back to offline apps." This is not the first time that Google has had technical problems. In February 2009, Google's Gmail service experienced a breakdown leaving millions of people worldwide without access to the free web-based e-mail service for a few hours. In January, the internet company was hit by technical problems resulting in users being unable to access search results.

.

Greece puts brakes on Google's Street View

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8045517.stm

The Hellenic Data Protection Authority wants more information. Greece's data protection agency has banned Google from expanding its Street View service in the country, pending "additional information" from the firm. Street View gives users a 360-degree view of a road via Google Maps. Authorities want to know how long the images would be kept on Google's database and what measures it will take to make people aware of privacy rights. A similar street mapping service, run by local ISP Kapou, was also suspended for the same reason. In a statement, Google said that it had not seen the full details of the The Hellenic Data Protection Authority's request, but had taken steps to protect people's privacy. "Google takes privacy very seriously, and that's why we have put in place a number of features, including the blurring of faces and licence plates, to ensure that Street View will respect local norms when it launches in Greece," the statement read. "We have already spoken with the Hellenic Data Protection Authority to ensure that they understand the importance we place on protecting user privacy. Now we wait for the domino effect Simon Davies Privacy International "Street View has not been banned in Greece. We have received a request for further information and we are happy to continue discussing these issues with them. We will discuss with them whether it is appropriate for us to continue driving in the meantime. "Although that dialogue is ongoing, we believe that launching in Greece will offer enormous benefits to both Greek users and the people elsewhere who are interested in taking a virtual tour of some of its many tourist attractions." First launched in the US two years ago, Street View has now covers nine countries, including the United Kingdom and Google wants to expand the service to cover all of Europe. Users zoom in to a given location in Google Maps, and then drag the "Pegman" icon above the zoom bar on to a given street. A picture view of that street appears, which users can control to get a 360-degree view of the area or to progress on street level, throughout the city. Google says the service shows only imagery already visible from public thoroughfares. Under fire However, it has come in for criticism from some quarters, being accused of an invasion of privacy. While many of these charges have been dismissed, either through the courts or by regional information commissioners, in some cases people have taken a more direct approach. In April, residents near Milton Keynes blocked the driver of a Google Street View car when he started taking photographs of their homes saying the service was "facilitating crime". Google's street mapping cars are, for now, being kept in neutral. The Pentagon has also banned Google from filming near or inside its military bases, saying it posed a "potential threat" to security. The director of the UK-based privacy watchdog Privacy International, Simon Davies, said the Greeks' decision would set a precedent for other nations. "This is fantastic news. The Greek regulators understand the risks of future technology creep. They have watched what has happened in the US and UK very carefully and will be familiar with the arguments on both sides. "This highlights the difference between regulators - some will allow the public space to be exploited, others acknowledge that people's privacy needs to be protected. "Now we wait for the domino effect, as the Greek decision sets an example that others may follow - we will see what happens next in Central Europe."

Social Protection: The Best Ways to Safeguard Personal Data

.

Social media sites are fun, but when you participate, you run the risk of sharing more about yourself than you should. The good news is that close to 99.9 percent of social network privacy issues are under your control.

Listed below, in alphabetical order by site name, are a few tricks I’ve discovered to keep information private on some of the more popular social networks. Hopefully, these steps will give you ideas to use on other sites not listed.

Facebook
Many articles have been dedicated to configuring Facebook Privacy settings, but for most users, four settings are key. Go first to Settings, Privacy, and then follow these options:

• Search, Search Discovery – You should control how you show up in Facebook Search. You can let “everyone” find your profile by searching; or, at the extreme, you can allow only your Facebook Friends to find you.
• Search, Search Result Content – I am a fan of the approach that allows "everyone" in Search Discovery, while adjusting the Search Result Content so all anyone sees is your "profile picture" (hopefully, a public picture) and a "link to send me a message." This way, people can find you and contact you, but you decide if you want to connect and share more data.
• Search, Public Search Listing – Do you want to share your data with search engines like Google? If not, keep your information separate and uncheck this box.
• Profile, Contact Information – Ask yourself how much information you want your friends to see. If your Facebook friends are limited to close friends, who cares? If you have connected with 300 people, maybe you should hide some contact data. By the way, Facebook has a great tool: While still in the Profile section, click on Basic. You can type in a friend's name and see exactly how that friend sees your profile.

One thing: The above tips are great, but if you are a heavy Facebook user, you really should do some more research.

FriendFeed
To keep FriendFeed data private, the key is to only let people you approve see your feed. This is easy to set up. Go to Settings and check on Private Feed. Notably, I surprised myself while researching this blog: When I tried to create a FriendFeed account, I discovered that I already had one -- an account I had forgotten about. This experience crystallizes the importance of setting privacy rules up front; as life gets busy, you may well forget about them and what they say about you.

LinkedIn
Many people view LinkedIn as the business version of Facebook -- a far more professional approach to sharing information. While I would agree with that, don't be fooled into thinking there are no privacy issues with LinkedIn! Two changes are musts, even though there are a number of settings you should explore in the Privacy Settings section of the site’s Account & Settings option:

• Profile Views – If I go to view the profile of, say, a former co-worker or an old friend from college, the next time they log in they could see: "David Silversmith visited your profile." If you don't want people to know that you have been visiting, you need to adjust your Profile Views to: "Don’t show users that I’ve viewed their profile."
• Profile and Status Updates – Are you "fine-tuning" your LinkedIn profile for a potential job search? Well, if you’re not careful, all of your changes will be broadcast to your connections -- many of whom probably work at your current employer. You should adjust your profile to say: "No, do not notify anyone and do not include me in company or industry updates."

Twitter
One setting is critical: Under Settings, Account, you have a choice to "protect my updates." If you don't protect your updates, then anybody can choose to follow you. If you protect your updates, then “follow requests” are sent to you for approval and you decide who can follow you. This also keeps your updates out of search results.

To sum up: The first time you log in to a new social media site, head to the Settings section. Review the options, and don't add any personal data until you understand them.

I estimate that less than 1 percent of social site users take that step. I urge you to join this elite group!

http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=715&doc_id=176452&

Google’s Founder Larry Page: Executing On Your Dreams

.

Inauguration speeches range from interesting to boring to inspirational. Here’s one that’s worth sharing - read the transcript here. Note the “healthy disregard for the impossible”, the optimism and the strong impact his father had on him. We rarely appreciate the extent of sacrifice our parents make for us and how valuable that is in our lives.

You know what it’s like to wake up in the middle of the night with a vivid dream? And you know how, if you don’t have a pencil and pad by the bed to write it down, it will be completely gone the next morning?

Well, I had one of those dreams when I was 23. When I suddenly woke up, I was thinking: what if we could download the whole web, and just keep the links and… I grabbed a pen and started writing! Sometimes it is important to wake up and stop dreaming. I spent the middle of that night scribbling out the details and convincing myself it would work. Soon after, I told my advisor, Terry Winograd, it would take a couple of weeks to download the web — he nodded knowingly, fully aware it would take much longer but wise enough to not tell me. The optimism of youth is often underrated! Amazingly, I had no thought of building a search engine. The idea wasn’t even on the radar. But, much later we happened upon a better way of ranking webpages to make a really great search engine, and Google was born. When a really great dream shows up, grab it!

On how to stay on track when starting out:

We almost didn’t start Google because my co-founder Sergey and I were too worried about dropping out of our Ph.D. program. You are probably on the right track if you feel like a sidewalk worm during a rainstorm! That is about how we felt after we maxed out three credit cards buying hard disks off the back of a truck. That was the first hardware for Google. Parents and friends: more credit cards always help. What is the one sentence summary of how you change the world? Always work hard on something uncomfortably exciting!

http://telecompk.net/2009/05/04/googles-founder-larry-page-executing-on-your-dreams/

The Man Who Made Gmail Says Real-Time Conversation is What's Next

.
Paul Buchheit built the first version of Gmail in one day. Then he built the first prototype of Google's contextual advertising service Adsense, in one day as well. Now he's working on a much-watched startup called FriendFeed that he believes just brought to market the next big form of communication online: flowing, multi-person, real-time conversations.

"The open, realtime discussions that occur on FriendFeed," he says, "are going to become a major new communication medium on the same level as email, IM and blogging." That's a pretty ambitious claim, but Buchheit has the credibility to make it... More

Sync Google Apps user accounts with your LDAP system

.
According to a post on the Google Enterprise Blog this morning, there's a new tool for Google Apps users that lets businesses sync the user account information in Google Apps with the business's LDAP user directory system. If you're in I.T., you probably already know what that means, but if not, let me spell it out for you: Google now syncs with Microsoft's Active Directory.

Of course, there are other systems that use LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol), including Lotus Domino and even the open source software OpenLDAP, but syncing with Microsoft's Active Directory - the directory system used by business worldwide running Windows Server - that's a big deal.

The syncing is made possible by way of a new utility called Google Apps Directory Sync, something that was brought over from Google's Postini security and archiving service. With this tool, businesses no longer have to create an entirely separate user account list within Google Apps - they can just use the user account information already stored within their current LDAP repository. The Directory Sync tool copies over all sorts of directory information to Google Apps, including mailing lists, groups, and user aliases to match up with the organizational schema currently in place in the LDAP system. The sync is performed one-way from the LDAP directory to Google Apps, so there's no fear of the LDAP's server information being updated or altered in any way.

Considering that many Google Apps implementations are used within schools, the time saved by not having to create separate user lists for hundreds or even thousands of students is going to be a lifesaver for the often overworked I.T. professionals. For others who have yet to adopt Google Apps, a tool like this may place the service under consideration for the first time.

Google Apps Directory Sync is now included at no additional cost with Google Apps Premier, Education and Partner Edition customers.


http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2009/04/sync-google-apps-user-accounts-with.html

Web tool 'as important as Google'

.

A web tool that "could be as important as Google", according to some experts, has been shown off to the public.

Wolfram Alpha is the brainchild of British-born physicist Stephen Wolfram.

The free program aims to answer questions directly, rather than display web pages in response to a query like a search engine.

The "computational knowledge engine", as the technology is known, will be available to the public from the middle of May this year.

"Our goal is to make expert knowledge accessible to anyone, anywhere, anytime," said Dr Wolfram at the demonstration at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

The tool computes many of the answers "on the fly" by grabbing raw data from public and licensed databases, along with live feeds such as share prices and weather information.

People can use the system to look up simple facts - such as the height of Mount Everest - or crunch several data sets together to produce new results, such as a country's GDP.

Other functions solve complex mathematical equations, plot scientific figures or chart natural events.

"Like interacting with an expert, it will understand what you're talking about, do the computation, and then present you with the results," said Dr Wolfram.

As a result, much of the data is scientific, although there is also limited cultural information about pop stars and films.

Dr Wolfram said the "trillions of pieces of data" were chosen and managed by a team of "experts" at Wolfram Research, who also massage the information to make sure it can be read and displayed by the system.

Nova Spivak, founder of the web tool Twine, has described Alpha as having the potential to be as important to the web as Google.

Developers say Wolfram Alpha can simplify language to remove 'linguistic fluff'

"Wolfram Alpha is like plugging into a vast electronic brain," he wrote earlier this year. "It computes answers - it doesn't merely look them up in a big database."

Learning language

The new tool uses a technique known as natural language processing to return answers.

This allows users to ask questions of the tool using normal, spoken language rather than specific search terms.

For example, a relatively simple search, such as "who was the president of Brazil in 1923?", will return the answer "Artur da Silva Bernardes".

This technique has long been the holy grail of computer scientists who aim to allow people to interact with computers in an instinctive way.

Dr Wolfram said that Alpha has solved many of the problems of interpreting people's questions.

"We thought there would be a huge amount of ambiguity in search terms, but it turns out not to be the case," he said.

In addition, he said, the system had got "pretty good at removing linguistic fluff", the kinds of words that are not necessary for the system to find and compute the relevant data.

Searching for 'Blair Bush' could give a different result...

Simple text

However, he said, most users tend to stop using structured sentences fairly quickly.

"Pretty soon they get lazy, and they say 'I don't need all those extra words'."

Instead they tended to use "concepts" similar to how most people use search engines today.

But Dr Boris Katz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a natural language expert, said he was "disappointed" by Dr Wolfram's "dismissal of English syntax as 'fluff'''.

For example, he said, suppose someone asks ''When did Barack Obama visit Nicolas Sarkozy?"

"Here, understanding the sentence structure is important if you want to be able to distinguish cases where it was Barack Obama who visited Nicolas from cases where it was Nicolas Sarkozy who visited Barack Obama," he said.

...than searching for 'Bush Blair'

"I believe he is misguided in treating language as a nuisance instead of trying to understand the way it organises concepts into structures that require understanding and harnessing."

Dr Katz is the head of the Start project, a natural language processing tool that claims to be "the world's first web-based question answering system". It has been on the web since December 1993.

Like Alpha, the system searches a series of organised databases to return relevant answers to search queries. However, it only uses public databases and runs on a much smaller scale than Alpha.

Dr Katz said it answers "millions of questions from hundreds of thousands of users from around the world" on topics as diverse as places, movies, people and dictionary definitions.

It is also able to compute answers from several sources in a similar way to Alpha.

Web companies have also harnessed natural language processing.

For example, Powerset uses technology developed at the Palo Alto Research Center, the former research laboratories of Xerox.

The company is attempting to build a similar search engine "that reads and understands every sentence on the Web".

In May 2008, the company released a tool that allowed people to search parts of Wikipedia. Two months later, it was acquired by Microsoft.

Dr Wolfram said he has been working on Alpha for several years. However, he imagines that it will continue to evolve.

"In a sense we are at the beginning," he said.