Back in March, Radar Networks CEO Nova Spivack blogged about Wolfram|Alpha, a new Web service from Mathematica creator Stephen Wolfram, and said it could be as important as Google. Nova’s a smart guy, but it was reasonable to greet his enthusiasm with skepticism–new stuff gets favorably compared to Google all the time, and often turns out to be massively disappointing. But Wolfram|Alpha is now live–albeit in a preview mode that’s struggling to keep up with the sudden influx of users–and Nova’s assessment turned out to be cool and collected. The service is a work in progress, but it’s the most interesting new research tool since Wikipedia–and yes, it’s not unreasonable to discuss it in the same breath as Google.

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Lotsa cool-techology news today…

Steve Levy on Wolfram|Alpha.

Next generation Windows-on-Mac.

Real work with Windows 7.

Samsung’s cool E-Ink phone keyboard.

The trouble with 200-Mbps Internet.

A netbook or a phone?

Should Facebook censor holocaust deniers?

Finally, pants with a keyboard!