History
Launch preparations began on May 15, 2009 at 7 pm CDT and were broadcast live on Justin.tv. The plan was to publicly launch the service a few hours later, with expected issues due to extreme load. The service was officially launched on May 18, 2009.
Wolfram Alpha has received mixed reviews. Wolfram Alpha advocates point to its potential, some even stating that how it determines results is more important than current usefulness.
On December 3, 2009, an iPhone app was introduced. Some users considered the initial $50 price of the iOS app unnecessarily high, since the same features could be freely accessed by using a web browser instead. They also complained about the simultaneous removal of the mobile formatting option for the site. Wolfram responded by lowering the price to $2, offering a refund to existing customers and re-instating the mobile site.
On October 6, 2010 an Android version of the app was released and it is now available for Kindle Fire and Nook. A further 71 apps are available which use the Wolfram Alpha engine for specialized tasks.
Read more about this topic: Wolfram Alpha
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is nothing truer than myth: history, in its attempt to “realize” myth, distorts it, stops halfway; when history claims to have “succeeded” this is nothing but humbug and mystification. Everything we dream is “realizable.” Reality does not have to be: it is simply what it is.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“It is true that this man was nothing but an elemental force in motion, directed and rendered more effective by extreme cunning and by a relentless tactical clairvoyance .... Hitler was history in its purest form.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“If man is reduced to being nothing but a character in history, he has no other choice but to subside into the sound and fury of a completely irrational history or to endow history with the form of human reason.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)