News, Views & Insights

Date Archive: 2016 November

Computation & Analysis

Making Wikipedia Knowledge Visible

November 23, 2016

Over the past few months, Wolfram Community members have been exploring ways of visualizing the known universe of Wikipedia knowledge. From Bob Dylan's networks to the persistence of "philosophy" as a category, Wolfram Community has been asking: "What does knowledge actually look like in the digital age?"

John Moore, Marketing and Technical Content Team Lead, Technical Communications & Strategy Group

Announcements & Events

Launching Wolfram Player for iOS

November 16, 2016

UPDATE:

Wolfram Player for iOS is out of beta! You can download it from the App Store today. Learn more in this blog post. It's been a long road. To some degree, we've been working on a Wolfram notebook front end for iOS for about six years now. And in the process, we've learned a lot about notebook front ends, a thing we already knew a lot about. Let's rewind the tape a bit and review.

John Fultz, Director of User Interface Technology

Current Events & History

Celebrating Gottfried Leibniz on the 300th Anniversary of His Death

November 14, 2016

Today is the 300th anniversary of the death of Gottfried Leibniz, a man whose work has had a deep influence on what we do here at Wolfram Research. He was born July 1, 1646, in Leipzig, and died November 14, 1716, in Hanover, which was, at the time, part of the Holy Roman Empire. I associate his name most strongly with my time learning calculus, which he invented in parallel with Isaac Newton. But Leibniz was a polymath, and his ideas and influence were much broader than that. He invented binary numbers, the integral sign and an early form of mechanical calculator.

Kathryn Cramer, Technical Communications and Strategy Group

Announcements & Events

The 2016 Wolfram One-Liner Competition Winners

November 9, 2016

Could you fit the code for a fully functional game of Pong into a single tweet? One that gives you more points the more you take your chances in letting the "ball" escape? Philip Maymin did, and took first prize with that submission in the One-Liner Competition held at this year's Wolfram Technology Conference. Participants in the competition submit 128 or fewer tweetable characters of Wolfram Language code to perform the most impressive computation they can dream up. We had a bumper crop of entries this year that showed the surprising power of the Wolfram Language. You might think that after decades of experience creating and developing with the Wolfram Language, we at Wolfram Research would have seen and thought of it all. But every year our conference attendees surprise us. Read on to see the amazing effects you can achieve with a tweet of Wolfram Language code.

Honorable Mention

Amy Friedman: "The Song Titles" (110 characters)

Christopher Carlson, Senior User Interface Developer, User Interfaces

Education & Academic

My Wolfram Tech Conference 2016 Highlights

November 4, 2016

Here are just a handful of things I heard while attending my first Wolfram Technology Conference: "We had a nearly 4-billion-time speedup on this code example." "We've worked together for over 9 years, and now we're finally meeting!" "Coding in the Wolfram Language is like collaborating with 200 or 300 experts." "You can turn financial data into rap music. Instead, how about we turn rap music into financial data?" As a first-timer from the Wolfram Blog Team attending the Technology Conference, I wanted to share with you some of the highlights for me---making new friends, watching Wolfram Language experts code and seeing what the Wolfram family has been up to around the world this past year.

Zach Littrell, Technical Content Writer, Technical Communications and Strategy Group