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Announcements & Events

Third-Generation Blockchain Functionality with Tezos and the Wolfram Language

As CEO of Wolfram Blockchain Labs (WBL), I think one of the most exciting parts of my job is collaborating with other leaders in the blockchain space to expand tools for developers and business use cases. For several years now, we’ve been adding a steady stream of blockchain functionality into the Wolfram Language to enable development of knowledge-based distributed applications and computational contracts. You may have noticed the growing number of popular blockchains (ARK, Bitcoin, bloxberg, Cardano, Ethereum, MultiChain...) partnering with us and integrating into our platform. It’s already led to some cool explorations, and we have a lot more in the pipeline.

Today, WBL is happy to announce its latest such collaboration, a partnership with TQ Tezos. That includes Tezos blockchain integration in the Wolfram Language, which is great news for smart contract developers and enthusiasts. But that’s just the beginning. Our long-term plans include a lot of big ideas that we think everyone will be excited about!

Jon Woodard, CEO, Wolfram Blockchain Labs
Best of Blog

In Less Than a Year, So Much New: Launching Version 12.1 of Wolfram Language & Mathematica

We're pleased that despite the coronavirus pandemic and its impact on so many people and businesses we're still able to launch today as planned... (Thanks to our dedicated team and the fact that remote working has been part of our company for decades...)

The Biggest .1 Release Ever

It’s always an interesting time. We’re getting ready to wrap up a .1 version---to release the latest fruits of our research and development efforts. “Is it going to be a big release?”, I wonder. Of course, I know we’ve done a lot of work since we released Version 12.0 last April. All those design reviews (many livestreamed). All those new things we’ve built and figured out.

But then we start actually making the list for the new version. And---OMG---it goes on and on. Different teams are delivering on this or that project that started X years ago. A new function is being added for this. There's some new innovation about that. Etc.

We started this journey a third of a century ago when we began the development of Version 1.0. And after all these years, it's amazing how the energy of each new release seems to be ever greater.

And as we went on making the list for Version 12.1 we wondered, "Will it actually be our biggest .1 release ever?". We finally got the answer: "Yes! And by a lot".

Counting functions isn't always the best measure, but it's an indication. And in Version 12.1 there are a total of 182 completely new functions---as well as updates and enhancements to many hundreds more.

Stephen Wolfram
Announcements & Events

Version 12 Launches Today! (And It’s a Big Jump for Wolfram Language and Mathematica)

The Road to Version 12

Today we're releasing Version 12 of Wolfram Language (and Mathematica) on desktop platforms, and in the Wolfram Cloud. We released Version 11.0 in August 2016, 11.1 in March 2017, 11.2 in September 2017 and 11.3 in March 2018. It's a big jump from Version 11.3 to Version 12.0. Altogether there are 278 completely new functions, in perhaps 103 areas, together with thousands of different updates across the system:

Stephen Wolfram
Announcements & Events

Five Ways to Make Your Technical Presentations Awesome

"Tell me and I forget. Teach me and I remember. Involve me and I learn." -- Benjamin Franklin I can count on one hand the best presentations I have ever experienced, the most recent being my university dynamics lecturer bringing out his electric guitar at the end of term to demonstrate sound waves; a pharmaceutical CEO giving an impassioned after-dinner oration about how his love of music influenced his business decisions; and last but not least, my award-winning attempt at explaining quantum entanglement using a marble run and a cardboard box (I won a bottle of wine). It's perhaps equally easy to recall all the worst presentations I've experienced as well---for example, too many PowerPoint presentations crammed full of more bullet points than a shooting target; infinitesimally small text that only Superman's telescopic vision could handle; presenters intent on slowly reading every word that they've squeezed onto a screen and thoroughly missing the point of a presentation: that of succinctly communicating interesting ideas to an audience.
Joanna Crown, Strategic Projects, Strategic Initiatives
Announcements & Events

Announcing Wolfram Presenter Tools

Introducing the Ultimate Technical Presentation Environment with Live Interactivity

We are delighted to announce that Wolfram's latest comprehensive notebook technology extension is here. Released with Version 11.3 of Wolfram desktop products, Wolfram Presenter Tools is the world's first fully computational presentation environment, seamlessly extending the notebook workflow for easy creation and delivery of dynamic presentations and slide shows, automatically scaled to fit any screen size. Our unique presentation features include rapid stylesheet updating and automatic slide breaking based on cell style.
Cat Frazier, Wolfram Blog Project Manager, Document & Media Systems
Announcements & Events

Roaring into 2018 with Another Big Release: Launching Version 11.3 of the Wolfram Language & Mathematica

The Release Pipeline

Last September we released Version 11.2 of the Wolfram Language and Mathematica—with all sorts of new functionality, including 100+ completely new functions. Version 11.2 was a big release. But today we’ve got a still bigger release: Version 11.3 that, among other things, includes nearly 120 completely new functions.

This June 23rd it’ll be 30 years since we released Version 1.0, and I'm very proud of the fact that we’ve now been able to maintain an accelerating rate of innovation and development for no less than three decades. Critical to this, of course, has been the fact that we use the Wolfram Language to develop the Wolfram Language—and indeed most of the things that we can now add in Version 11.3 are only possible because we’re making use of the huge stack of technology that we’ve been systematically building for more than 30 years.

We’ve always got a large pipeline of R&D underway, and our strategy for .1 versions is to use them to release everything that’s ready at a particular moment in time. Sometimes what's in a .1 version may not completely fill out a new area, and some of the functions may be tagged as “experimental”. But our goal with .1 versions is to be able to deliver the latest fruits of our R&D efforts on as timely a basis as possible. Integer (.0) versions aim to be more systematic, and to provide full coverage of new areas, rounding out what has been delivered incrementally in .1 versions.

In addition to all the new functionality in 11.3, there’s a new element to our process. Starting a couple of months ago, we began livestreaming internal design review meetings that I held as we brought Version 11.3 to completion. So for those interested in “how the sausage is made”, there are now almost 122 hours of recorded meetings, from which you can find out exactly how some of the things you can now see released in Version 11.3 were originally invented. And in this post, I'm going to be linking to specific recorded livestreams relevant to features I'm discussing.

What’s New?

OK, so what’s new in Version 11.3? Well, a lot of things. And, by the way, Version 11.3 is available today on both desktop (Mac, Windows, Linux) and the Wolfram Cloud. (And yes, it takes extremely nontrivial software engineering, management and quality assurance to achieve simultaneous releases of this kind.)
Stephen Wolfram
Announcements & Events

It’s Another Impressive Release! Launching Version 11.2 Today

Our Latest R&D Output

I’m excited today to announce the latest output from our R&D pipeline: Version 11.2 of the Wolfram Language and Mathematica---available immediately on desktop (Mac, Windows, Linux) and cloud.

It was only this spring that we released Version 11.1. But after the summer we're now ready for another impressive release---with all kinds of additions and enhancements, including 100+ entirely new functions:

Stephen Wolfram