Steven Wolfram’s new “knowledge engine” has launched to mixed results.  While the tool is just as powerful as advertised in some areas (like the comparing stocks, answering physics questions, or performing complex numerical calculations), there are other areas where it falls short of the mark.

While Wolfram|Alpha can compare the 2008 season of the Oakland A’s against that of the San Francisco Giants, it still can’t figure out when the baseball season begins.  Perhaps, in time, Wolfram Research will be able to work out the bugs.  But for the time being it is still a very specialized tool.

Thankfully, Wolfram|Alpha does excel …

Wolfram|Alpha is the newest brainchild of Steven Wolfram.  If you are unfamiliar with his work, he is the man responsible for Mathematica, the most common mathematical programming language to find its way into high schools and colleges.

Wolfram|Alpha, which is scheduled to launch in about a week, is a new kind of search engine designed to find and formulate answers to any sort of factual question.  In short, it’s supposed to act as a computerized subject area expert.

Always eager to build on his previous work, Steven Wolfram constructed Wolfram|Alpha inside Mathematica, utilizing some five to six million lines of code.  By …