This is one issue that one poorly written Techcrunch article in particular brought up - people seem to think that Wolfram Alpha is made to compete with web search engines like Google. In reality, this kind of comparison is like saying that Wikipedia is trying to shut down Google - it just doesn’t make sense! Wolfram Alpha does focus more on a search bar than most wiki sites, but it’s not made for finding web pages - it simple uses curated data to answer questions, plain and simple.

Wolfram Alpha Homepage

I can see how the whole Google-killer title developed - Wolfram Alpha’s homepage even looks like Google in design. Google’s brand new charts for a few types of information (released during the Wolfram Alpha webcast, no less) also are bordering it’s functionality. However, the people who have tried the product (or at least watched the webcast) agree that it has a wide range of factual data and is capable of making computations based on this data. This is a functionality different from any keyword-based searching and something unseen so far (most notable attempt being Cyc and OpenCyc); as a result we have no baseline to compare it to or a service to be one-upped.

One thing that would really clear up these arguments, though, would be a proper demo from Wolfram - not a long webcast or a leaked screenshot, but a proper 2-3 minute video just demoing its capabilities. Because of the academic presentation of Wolfram Alpha so far, its descriptive hasn’t reached that wide an audience - a more accessible video would make much more of an impact. The point is mute, of course, since they’re opening it for public use in the next month; all the same it would be nice to get one proper preview.

With that, I rest my case. I’m sure that, if it lives up to its claims, it will be an amazing academic resource and completely irrelevant to general Googling. I think that it’s got a good chance of fulfilling its claims too, considering that it’s the same team (and mind) that created Mathematica - even with a 15-day trial it’s clear the software’s over my head in complexity. So if any team can pull it off, it’s likely Wolfram’s.

As a primer to working with SDL I ended up making pong - naturally with some differences to the original, but pong nonetheless. It was definitely a “tutorial” game - heck, the font used is from Lazy Foo’ Production’s tutorials, as is some of the code - but an excellent way to get to programming without a pre-made engine.

Download SDL Pong

Controls: WASD for left player, arrow keys for right player, R resets.

Features:

• Paddles can move in all directions
• No score limit - play as long as you like!
• Hitting the ball while moving forward/back changes its speed - use this to do power shots or deaden it so you can aim better.
• Paddle size & speed changes for both players based on how they’re performing.
• Ball speeds up the longer you play

While it was good to make this, I’m most likely to end up using OpenGL for graphics next game - SDL is too limited for most (gaming) applications. It will still be there, mostly for keyboard and mouse events, but little else. I still want to revive Xonic (pronounced ex-zonic, though that’s no longer its official name), whether for iPhone or for free - it’s one of the few remaining games I can think of that work really well with multiple people on the same system and makes for some frantic battles!

Or more accurately, iPod Touch madness - in the past two weeks of owning it I’ve spent $64 CAD (plus tax) on apps, most good, some not. I’ve compiled a list here, but some of these apps deserve a more in depth review:

AppSniper: Buy

Because of this $0.99 application I’ve saved money on apps I want and tried out on-sale apps I would never have heard of otherwise; if you buy apps frequently, you need AppSniper. While there are some other applications that show a list of on-sale apps (PandoraBox comes to mind), AppSniper is the only one that gives you price history and a “snipes” list that will watch for price changes on specific applications.

There’s not much more that needs to be said - it lets you see a lot more of what the iPhone has to offer and save money. I’d recommend turning off syncing on startup and setting up your genre filters (eg. I never buy books from the app store, nor do I need medical applications).

Convertbot: Buy

Recently bumped back up from $0.99 to $1.99, Convertbot is still worth it being the fastest and best-looking of all the unit conversion applications - it’s obvious that time was put into designing this specificall for the iPhone. From the start it’s easy to operate - you spin to choose your units, the center button swaps the two units you’re converting (eg. CAD -> USD to USD -> CAD); tap either unit to change it or the screen to enter the number. In practice it makes it quick and easy while still visually impressive.

In addition to these features, the application has a wide variety of units - including measures of radioactivity and typography! The currency units are also kept up to date, updating every 15 minutes. Convertbot remains one of the limited list of utilities I would buy again if necessary.

These are just two applications I can cover right now; there’s several more that I suggest getting, including the Google Mobile App, Dictionary.com’s app, Wikipanion, and Stanza - all 4 are free.