Archive for July 9, 2009

Thursday, July 9, 2009

Wolfram Alpha and Hubristic User Interfaces

Mencius Moldbug:

WA is two things: a set of specialized, hand-built databases and data visualization apps, each of which would be cool, the set of which almost deserves the hype; and an intelligent UI, which translates an unstructured natural-language query into a call to one of these tools. The apps are useful and fine and good. The natural-language UI is a monstrous encumbrance, which needs to be taken out back and shot.

Beta

John Gruber:

Imagine that—people thought that what Google meant by “beta” was what everyone else means by “beta.”