Wolfram Alpha for Web Designers

Written by Ethan Gardner Web Design

With Twitter, Google Wave, and Opera Unite, there has been a lot of recent talk regarding the future of the web. You may have also heard of Wolfram Alpha, a non-traditional search engine capable of complex calculations and conversions, as part of the “future” discussion.

With all the hype, I decided to check Wolfram Alpha out myself. Initially, I struggled to find a use for the data, but as I spent more time exploring the possibilities, I came across some useful ways it can be used for producing web sites and general business purposes.

Design & Development Uses

There are two ways that I can see using Wolfram Alpha. The first is to use its features to help develop websites, produce design materials, and build applications.

Working with Color

I have written about generating color schemes from scratch in a previous post, but Wolfram Alpha tells you more about a color than you’d ever want to know. Do a simple search for a color in virtually any format, and you are presented with a color swatch, the nearest named color values, and a table of possible color schemes.

HTML Entity Look-up

We all know special characters have to be encoded to maintain valid markup, and Wolfram Alpha can help you. While Left Logic still has the best HTML entity look-up I have used, it is been down on multiple occasions.

The search for HTML entities works both ways on Wolfram Alpha. You can either enter the character name such as “ampersand” or its corresponding encoded value if you want to do a reverse look-up.

Calculate Download Time

Unfortunately, not everyone has a high-speed internet connection. As developers we have a responsibility to keep site speed manageable for our users. Simply input the page size with the connection speed, and the numbers are crunched for you.

Domain Information and Geolocation

A search on a domain name turns up the registering host’s name and location, approximate traffic numbers and ranking, page size, and an interesting visualization of the HTML hierarchy for the page. The visualization has a table with color-coded labels, but unfortunately, the image is so small you can’t really distinguish the colors.

Perhaps more useful, is the ability to retrieve the geolocation of an IP address. This has a range of possibilities for building web apps using the API.

The API

Wolfram Alpha also includes a well-documented REST API for developers. The documentation is an easy read since it is only a 12-page PDF. The search results are delivered in XML format which can easily be manipulated to display as HTML.

While I don’t think it will be commonplace to implement on an average website, the API certainly has application for specialized uses for science and computation since it harnesses the powerful Mathematica engine.

Paper Sizes

In addition to the web related uses, Wolfram Alpha can also be useful for print work by giving the dimensions of multiple paper formats as a quick reference.

General Business Uses

The second way Wolfram Alpha can be used in day-to-day work is for more general business purposes.

Time and Date

Most modern businesses have clients in a different state, territory, or country. Need to find out what time it is in your client’s location? Simply type in two cities and you’re given the time in each city, along with the distance, air travel time, and populations of each city.

Wolfram Alpha also includes a range of calendar features that you can use for invoicing purposes or general knowledge such as calculating the date 30 days from now or checking the dates of national holidays.

Conversions and Dimensions

Just about any type of conversion you want can be computed with Wolfram Alpha. Need to know how to convert pounds to kilograms for international shipments? No problem. Wolfram Alpha can also do currency conversions to help you declare a value for the shipment as well.

What Will Wolfram Alpha Contribute to Search?

Experimental search technologies are continually hitting the market or in development. Everything from semantic web, real-time search, and social search is being discussed right now. I don’t think Wolfram Alpha will ever replace Google, but if it succeeds, I think other search engines will be pushed to include a higher level of visualization on results pages and explore the market for niche search.

The true power of this alternative search engine is in its computational ability and attractive results. This article only scratches the surface of what can be accomplished with Wolfram Alpha, and I have discovered the more time you spend with it, the more useful it is.