Continuing with tradition, Wolfram Research Founder and CEO Stephen Wolfram kicked off last month's Wolfram Technology Conference 2010 by highlighting the year's top developments and sharing insights on new directions for Wolfram technologies. This year's conference keynote featured the unveiling of the forthcoming Mathematica 8, a demonstration of its powerful new functionality, and future opportunities for Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha. In the first part of this series, Stephen talked about Mathematica's "unstoppable momentum" and announced some of the new features coming in Mathematica 8.

Wolfram Research is saddened to announce the passing of Jerry Uhl, Professor Emeritus of Mathematics at the University of Illinois. Jerry's scholarly contributions to the field of mathematics are numerous, but we will remember him best for his passion for education and mathematics reform, which led him to the development of the Calculus&Mathematica program that is still used today by progressive math programs. For his support of Mathematica and his innovation in math education, Wolfram Research presented Jerry with the first Mathematica Pioneer Award in 2008. The following video was made for the presentation of that award.

Twenty-five years ago, the Mandelbrot set was published on the cover of Scientific American, in connection with an A. K. Dewdney Computer Recreations column. A few days ago, the original Mandelbrot set column was re-released. The Mandelbrot set became a rite of passage for anyone programming mathematical images. For me, I was making images on a Mac Plus, and sent some of them out in a zine I was running at the time. As a result, Piers Anthony asked me to help get fractal images and facts for his Mode series. In the course of this, Piers and I asked for and received permission to use the Mandelbrot set from Benoît himself. "You probably don't need my permission, but I'm happy to grant it to you."

The final day of this year's Wolfram Technology Conference was bittersweet. The presentations were outstanding again, but now it's all over. If there is a silver lining, it's that we can't wait to see what everyone will come up with next year!

Another great day at the Wolfram Technology Conference 2010! Wolfram Co-founder Theodore Gray kicked off the morning with his presentation on ebook publishing. Using his own ebook The Elements, he demonstrated how he used Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha to create a publication that is uniquely interactive and has been a runaway success with consumers, ranking #1 in the Apple Store. According to Theo, his company Touch Press is working on several more ebooks already.

Back on May 27, we wrote a remembrance of Martin Gardner. He would have been 96 on October 21, which has prompted the worldwide event, Celebration of Mind. If you look at the event map, you'll see the locations for over 50 events. Some of the 30 event locations in the United States include: Stanford University, to which Martin donated all his mathematical correspondence; MAA headquarters in Washington, DC; Magic Castle, in Los Angeles; and Fort Lauderdale, with an event hosted by James Randi. Here is an ambigram with the event logo, which was designed by Scott Kim. The logo is rotationally symmetric.

The Wolfram Technology Conference 2010 is off to a great start! In his opening keynote, Wolfram Research Founder and CEO Stephen Wolfram unveiled the forthcoming Mathematica 8. Through real-time demonstrations, attendees got to see many of the new features at work, including enhanced image processing capabilities, texture mapping, control systems, wavelet analysis, and much more. Over 500 new functions are being added in Version 8—almost the same as the total amount included in the original Version 1! This year's schedule covers a broad range of topics presented by users and Wolfram developers, including applications for probability and statistics, CUDA and Open CL programming, creating visualizations with Mathematica, and high-performance computation.

Wolfram Research and Wolfram|Alpha hosted the first Wolfram Data Summit in Washington, DC this September. Leaders of the world's primary data repositories attended the summit, exchanging experiences and brainstorming ideas for the future of data collection, management, and dispersion. In his keynote speech, Stephen Wolfram discussed the complex nature of gathering systematic knowledge and data together. He also talked about the creation of Wolfram|Alpha, how Mathematica helps with the challenges of making all data computable, and what we can expect moving forward. The transcript is available below.