WolframAlpha, the “computational knowledge engine,” is fantastic for those interested in math, science, engineering, music and more. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s worth investigating. It’s not a web search engine like Google or Bing, but instead is a searchable database of just about anything science-related.

Want to know about the Sun? Do you like caffeine? Have a need to convert AU to parsecs? Looking for a solution to a differential equation? Wolfram’s got your back!

WolframAlpha cranked out this integral calculus problem almost immediately! I wish I could say the same about my HP calculator!

I’ve been a long-time fan of the Firefox web browser, and I’ve been enjoying some of the new features that have been creeping into the beta builds lately. But I recently upgraded my Mac to Safari version 4, and I have to say, I am very impressed!

Acid3 tests a browser’s compatibility with Web 2.0 standards. When I ran this in Safari 4, I was surprised to see a result of 100/100!

My current version of Firefox, 3.5b99, made it to 93/100.

I do enjoy the usefulness of some of Safari’s new features, such as the Top Sites grid and the Developer tools. Others, like the Cover Flow view in History, offer some pleasing eye candy. The main improvement seems to be in Java-script engine performance. Gmail loaded noticeably faster and my Netflix queue drag-and-drop was much snappier with Safari 4′s “Nitro Engine.”

Both browsers offer a new “private browsing” mode, dubbed by some “porn mode.” Firefox seems to have a better implementation of this private browsing experience by suppressing cookies. Safari, on the other hand, keeps your cookies present when switching from normal to private browsing.

To test this yourself, login to Google while in normal browsing mode, then activate private browsing, then reload Google and you’ll see you’re still signed in. Try this again with Firefox 3.5b99 and you’ll notice the same doesn’t happen.

Safari’s private browsing seems silly when cookies stay intact, allowing websites to still identify the user. If anything, it gives the user a false sense of anonymity!

Private browsing flaws aside and despite the features and speed increases, until there’s an Adblock Plus for Safari, I’ll probably stick with Firefox as my primary browser. I’m sure others have extensions they’re attached to as well, and this alone may keep market share with Firefox.

The new Windows 7 RC demo sports some new features for the Microsoft operating system, most visually noticeable being the bright, new psychedelic wallpaper themes.

This is just one of the new psychedelic wallpapers included with Windows 7 RC, which I like to call Mushroom Trip.

Another impressive Windows 7 included wallpaper.

Looks like a wild acid trip!

Those of you that know me know that I’m a pretty big Apple fan.  It humbles me to tip my hat to M$, but I do enjoy the new eye candy!

Have you ever tried to use the hyperbolic trigonometric functions on the TI-83?

As far as I can tell, the only way to access the hyp trig functions like sinh and cosh is to go to Catalog and scroll all the way down to the function name.

Now granted, you can use the letter keys to skip down a bit closer to the function you’re looking for.  But scrolling through function after function is just awful, especially considering how many other calculators have a “Hyp” button right on them, or even individual sinh and cosh buttons (including OS X’s built-in calculator).

If I’m overlooking something, please feel free to leave a comment.  I’d love to know a shortcut to access those functions on the calculator!

If only I could get used to RPN, maybe I’d go the HP route.