Wolfram Alpha and Australia Government Open Up

Wolfram Alpha recently launched their WebService API. Currently they are charging for the use of APIs. It will be interesting to see how the developer community from universities will react to these fees. Wolfram Alpha team deserves credit providing APIs to their curated content in such a short period after the launch of
Wolfram Alpha.

Similar to the efforts in the US and UK, Australia government starts making government datasets publicly available.

It's all about "You"

Google's Udi Manber on Search

"You also want to be faster, bigger, more robust. But that’s not the main measure. The main measure is whether we help our users and give people what they need. And that now has to do with people, not necessarily some mathematical measurements. You really have to understand and kind of feel it all the time."

"There are other cases where the results are in the snippet. You don’t have to click on it. It was the perfect result. So you have to be careful. Sometimes when you improve search, you actually get less clicks. And that’s fine."