Tech enthusiasts are excited about the "computational knowledge engine" that swears it is not a search engine: Wolfram Alpha. Rather than simply giving links to other sites, Wolfram Alpha attempts to provide one-stop answers to questions. Here are examples:
- Graph unemployment rate differences between Minneapolis and Saint Paul
- Financial information for Microsoft
- Number of Internet users
Lawyers could certainly use some of this information in their practices. As an example, a query can provide the weather information (cloud cover, temperature, wind speed, relative humidity, etc.) for any particular day -- complete with hour-by-hour graphs. Here is the weather in Fargo, North Dakota on June 23, 2001. This information could be helpful in cases ranging from slip-and-fall cases to car accidents.
Undoubtedly, Google and the other mainstream search engines will pick up on these capabilities. In fact, they already have: Google Squared and Bing's "decision search engine".
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