The problem still is whether it's really useful for much at all.
That's where the price comes in.
I asked it around 6 questions and got 1 meaningful answer, beautifully formatted.
And that's precisely the issue with it. They're drawing on primary data in many cases, and just appear to be packaging it around a set of templates determined by them to be relevant.
The way me and my colleagues use data is just much more dynamic and involves looking a the dataset from all angles. I'm just not sure that their system accomodates anything like that.
And that, therein, lies the problem. Who is it really meant for? Data experts or regular punters? Its got the feel and reliability which sits no higher than an consumer product and yet the average 'man on the street' couldn't care less about any of the questions and issues that Wolfram Alpha are trying to cover. OK, so data experts then? Again, not really, because to be quite frank it just can't be trusted to be a) comprehensive; and b) up-to-date. It also doesn't build a strong enough link to the primary data source if you need to more about methodology etc.
So there it is. Wolfram Alpha we like what you're trying but is it not enough of anything for some and too much for others.
Pardon me, but you sound like a poser who doesn't have any idea what the Wolfram Alpha site and app are for.
Now I can't speak for everyone who uses Wolfram Alpha, but I use it to look up answers to math problems that I've either forgotten, or can't be bothered to derive:
1) How do you derive an exact analytical solution of the pendulum equation?
2) How do you expand Bessel functions into sines and cosines?
3) How can I make a quick GUI to solve the Van der Pol equation with arbitrary parameter values?
These are all problems that I occasionally have to deal with at work. I don't deal with them often enough that I can afford to spend hours coding up solutions in SciPy or Matlab. They're also esoteric enough that I'm not always going to remember their derivations.
I can solve these problems MUCH faster with Wolfram Alpha than I can with anything else.
Like others have said, I'd pay $10 bucks easy for this app now that I have an iPad.
