Yet another search engine

Tonight's preview of new search engine Wolfram|Alpha, whose logo says it's a "computational knowledge engine", and which purports to make finding statistics and computable data available on the web.

From the site's description:

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Wolfram|Alpha aims to bring expert-level knowledge and capabilities to the broadest possible range of people—spanning all professions and education levels. Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity.

Try it yourself here.

Looks like the search engine still needs some work. For example, I had no luck finding the violent crime rate in New York City, Boston, Washington DC, or California.