Bing: more than a search, it calculates nutrition, body mass and math formulas

 On its Bing blog Microsoft has reported its partnership with Wolfram Alpha that will enable online users to search for more complicated information. Wolfram Alpha provides a technology platform designed to offer "computable knowledge" to applications.

The post says: “Well, we‘ll be providing access to Wolfram Alpha’s advanced algorithms and expertly curated data within the Bing experience. This new and exciting work is completely aligned with our broader goal of enabling faster, more informed decisions. Specifically, we will bring nutritional information and tools into Bing’s search results, as well as some straight up hard math and homework help.”

In the post the developers cite a number of examples of how Internet searchers can use the new service and what they can do with it. Thus, one practical aspect is that users will be able to find answers to such questions as which product has more nutritional value. Searching for a food item on Bing will return a nutrition facts label that summarizes all information on that food item in a very familiar and friendly format.

Besides, the deal with Wolfram Alpha enables Bing searchers to calculate their body mass index right in the search engine. Thus is you search for different keywords that contain BMI in the phrase there will be a special box for calculation on the Bing page and you will be offered to calculate your BMI without visiting any dedicated websites.

However, according to the post this is not all. Apart from nutritional information and BMI calculation the partnership with Wolfram Alpha means also solving both simple and complex mathematics task.