My dad just sent me a link to a website which pretty much held me head-locked to the floor, drilled a hole in my skull and then fucked me in the mind until I was weeping for mercy.

This is probably the most awesome bit of technology I’ve seen since Google came along, and from the looks of it, it’s set to become a massive part of our lives before too long. The guy who made it is an absolute frikken genius.

It’s a search and computational engine for everything. For example, you can ask it “what is the average age of a male in Finland” and it will not only give you the answer, but a bunch of related data too. You can ask it about the town of Springfield. There are many Springfield’s in the world, so it will look at your IP address, figure out which Springfield is closest to you, and give you that result (along with a drop-down menu of other Springfields).

I decided to test the beast, and asked it “What was the weather in London when Winston Churchill died?”

It came back to me saying that it didn’t have weather data for January 24, 1965, but went on to helpfully offer me a historical temperatures table for that date. You actually have to play with it to understand how bloody marvelous this thing is.

Go watch the video demo here: http://www87.wolframalpha.com/screencast/introducingwolframalpha.html

And then go and use the site here: http://www87.wolframalpha.com