It pays to wait they say… If you were one of the naysayers who realized the unique/(possibly gimmicky) feature set of the Wolfram Alpha complex function solver. Essentially it was an app for geeks and rather deep pocketed geeks as WA did go for $50. At that price, one would think hardly anyone would bite. But according to Wolfram themselves, a touch over 10,000 sales at $50 have been recorded so far — no small feat. If you didn’t jump on the curiosity...

The Wolfram Alpha “intelligent search engine” that we mentioned here and here is back in the headlines today. The cause for concern, or in this case interest, is that Wolfram Alpha has decided to lower the price on their iPhone app for the holiday season. Starting today and running through the end of the year, Wolfram Alpha will now be on sale for $19.99 — much more reasonable than the previous $49.99 dragging behind the app like a lead weight. Like many...

In the book of “Ways to kill your profit”, WolframAlpha would have a two-page spread. One page for the insane price of of an intelligent search engine/question answerer and the second page would be about how they took away a dependable service. More on that second point — WolframAlpha used to have a pretty good iPhone optimized site. That was until they realized no one was buying their overpriced app. Solution: Neuter the free offering and force people...