Only in its early days, but a mind-boggling piece of work already, for
those interested in a glimpse of what Wolfram Research's "
WolframAlpha
Computational Knowledge Engine" can do, try entering your question or
calculation at
http://www.wolframalpha.com/ 
I was amused to find out it even knows "how much wood could a wood
chuck chuck?"
Rather than a general search engine like Google,
WolframAlpha attempts to
gather knowledge and then compute and infer answers to queries on that
knowledge.
Be sure to watch the video demo by genius Stephen Wolfram himself and be
prepared to have your socks knocked off with the types of queries the
system can already handle!
http://www.wolframalpha.com/screenca...framalpha.html
Some readers may be familiar or use Wolfram's
Mathematica software package
for performing numeric and symbolic math. Built on
Mathematica,
WolframAlpha
allows for natural language input and as mentioned, draws on data it knows about.
If nothing else, highly recommend you watch the video.
Best Regards
Gary Kopff
Mt Kuring-Gai