Wolfram Alpha

Stephen Wolfram is the guy behind Mathematica. His company, Wolfram Research, is releasing a new product next week called Wolfram Alpha, a screencast of which was made available today. The product is being billed as a competitor to Google, but I'm not sure that's the feel I get from the demonstration. It is fairly impressive at delivering answers to questions, rather than webpages that may have answers, although it must be noted that these questions have been hand-picked for the demo. Check out the screencast, I think you'll find it interesting in a science fiction future kind of way.