I was pretty excited when Wolfram Alpha launched. I'm a dork for knowledge and was psyched for a smart search engine that could return data, rather than links to data. Unfortunately I was pretty disappointed with some early queries I ran and lost interest pretty quickly. I thought the wording it took to return results was a bit finicky and never used it how I thought I would.

That being said, I think it could be a pretty good resource for college students. ReadWriteWeb seems to agree. It appears the programmers have worked out a number of kinks and bugs and the engine is constantly improving (plus it just signed a deal with Bing, which could be pretty big news). According to RWW the engine should be popular with college students (specifically Chemistry) and should be ready to go by the start of the semester.

If you are unfamiliar with Wolfram, here's some background and how it may help you with your studies.

Wolfram|Alpha's long-term goal is to make all systematic knowledge immediately computable and accessible to everyone. We aim to collect and curate all objective data; implement every known model, method, and algorithm; and make it possible to compute whatever can be computed about anything. Our goal is to build on the achievements of science and other systematizations of knowledge to provide a single source that can be relied on by everyone for definitive answers to factual queries.

Get it? Well, if not, maybe this isn't for you. Here are some Links to get you through the weekend ...

College Recruiter Has Advice On How NOT To Write a Cover Letter: Don't be boring: "What a snoozer! Everyone uses that line, let's see... being like everyone else isn't going to get you very far in your job search now is it? No it's not. So what you need to be is different, but more than different, unique and valuable. Let's take a look at some more creative and attention grabbing opening lines"

MonsterBlog Has More Advice On Setting Yourself Apart: "The other key action item to set yourself apart from the swells of job seekers is to send out thank-you notes promptly, not just after interviews but also to folks who have extended themselves to you. These thank-you notes must be handwritten -- gasp, not an email! Slowly writing with good penmanship is a good idea to clearly spell out your appreciation."

Ramit Sethi Gets Kinky: With the "Craiglist Penis Effect." I don't know what you're thinking this is, but you're probably wrong. "The Craigslist Penis Effect describes situations where everyone else is so horrible that, by being even half-decent, you can dominate everyone else and win." I ... It's ... uh ... just read it.