IBM is about to make these APIs (and many others) much more accessible as part of BlueMix (<a href="https://ace.ng.bluemix.net/" rel="nofollow">https://ace.ng.bluemix.net/</a> - the IBM PaaS/Heroku). I lead the team in charge of developing the Watson platform. Ask me questions!
If you want access to the API, you have to fill out a form, here: <a href="http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/form_ecosystem.html?cmp=usbrb&cm=s&csr=watson.site_20140319&cr=deveco&ct=usbrb301&cn=sec3partnerapp" rel="nofollow">http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/ibmwatson/form_ecosys...</a><p>This is buried in the docs as a comment on this page: <a href="https://developer.ibm.com/watson/docs/developing-watson-apis/application-development-flow/" rel="nofollow">https://developer.ibm.com/watson/docs/developing-watson-apis...</a><p>Edit:<p>No real support for 'playing around' with the API. Bummer.<p>Edit2:<p>Just went through the application process linked above. Be prepared to give info about yourself and your company and an explanation of why you want access to the Watson API, as well as what type of information you'll be working with. I stated 'just want to play around with the API'. We'll see how they react to that.
Out of curiosity I googled the same request.<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22His+1983+hit+\%22Beat+it\%22+featured+Eddie+Van+Halen+on+guitar.%22#safe=off&hl=en&q=His+1983+%22Beat+it%22+featured+Eddie+Van+Halen+on+guitar" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22His+1983+h...</a>.<p>I think this might be useful if Watson was being feed with a medical database. Otherwise I don't see any need for it; is there any?<p>edit: Watson as a legal consultant would be great. There might be a product in that, not as an replacement for a lawyer but more as guide/search tool.
Has anyone at HN used either IBM Watson or Wolfram Alpha to build a real (commercial) app? It feels like there should be a whole wave of apps built on either of these technologies but it doesn't seem to be materialising.<p>What is holding back the killer apps for answer/computation engines?
I am helping a customer integrate Watson into their system so I am very happy to see the news about BlueMix (<a href="https://ace.ng.bluemix.net/" rel="nofollow">https://ace.ng.bluemix.net/</a>) that apparently will allow me to keep experimenting with Watson after my consulting engagement is complete.<p>If you read the documentation, you will see that preparing training data and questions is fairly straightforward.
So you just ask it any random question and it knows everything? Or only things that come up on Jeopardy?<p>I don't see an API for feeding it information.
I found the link above to be a bit useless as it jumps right into getting answers with evidence. Here's a better overview link: <a href="https://developer.ibm.com/watson/docs/developing-watson-apis/using-question-answer-api-access-watson-capabilities/" rel="nofollow">https://developer.ibm.com/watson/docs/developing-watson-apis...</a>
I sent a e-mail to my co-workers containing "...natural English to ask Watson..." and somehow people read it as "You can ask Emma Watson, who is English, a question and she will respond".<p>And I thought, "...close enough - Watson could answer questions about Emma".
Does this also give access to their cooking and recipe data?<p>Edit: <a href="http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/cognitivecooking/" rel="nofollow">http://www.ibm.com/smarterplanet/us/en/cognitivecooking/</a>
Ive been looking into Watson's new application to analytics etc. How would that compare to say Mathimatica or the Wolfram Language/Data Science Platform?