Wolfram Alpha launches amid glitches

 

Summary

Myriad problems prevented Wolfram Alpha from going live last week as planned, but the new search engine finally launched a few hours later.

Events

IT Priorities 2010

Sydney, Australia - 27 Jul 2010
Melbourne, Australia - 28 Jul 2010
Mumbai, India - 4 Aug 2010
Delhi, India - 6 Aug 2010

IDC's Asia/Pacific Cloud Computing Conference 2010
31 Aug 2010

Marriott Hotel, Singapore

Wolfram Alpha struggled to get up and rolling last Friday evening under difficult conditions, as the company scaled back expectations for its performance last weekend.

The new search engine attempted to make its debut literally in the middle of the perfect storm: a tornado watch had engineers on edge in Champaign, Ill., where Wolfram Research attempted to bring the service online. However, networking and database problems also prevented the engine from launching as of 6 p.m. PDT, an hour after the company said it would go live to the world.

And to top it all off, uplink problems with the Justin.tv service prevented Wolfram from explaining exactly what was going on for nearly half an hour, while commenters in the chat room mercilessly heckled the company with the 21st century Bronx cheer: EPIC FAIL. Eventually, around 5:30 p.m. PDT, Wolfram founder Stephen Wolfram appeared on camera to explain that glitches were holding up the launch, as claps of thunder sounded in the background.

After initially claiming that the service would go live last Friday evening, Wolfram lowered expectations by only promising a test launch over the weekend, with full service expected by Monday. Searches could not be conducted through the main home page as of 6 p.m., but it was possible to get in through a back door posted on Twitter and in the Justin.tv chat room and start searches, although performance was spotty.

Wolfram Research was forced to show videos showing off the data center servers and power-redundancy systems taped earlier in the day while Stephen Wolfram convened an emergency meeting to figure out what was going on. The broadcast was somewhat less-than-polished, with audio engineers talking over Wolfram's initial address to the audience and rendering much of his speech incoherent.

At 9:10 p.m. PDT, Wolfram Alpha was up and running and seemed to be working just fine. A spokesman for Wolfram Research called at 7:30 p.m. PDT to say it was about to launch, but its exact launch time was unclear.

This article was first published as a blog post on CNET News.

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