IBMs Watson supercomputer is taking a big step towards public use. Today, the company announced plans to open Watson up to developers in 2014, establishing an open platform and API that would let coders to build apps on top of the supercomputers database and natural language skills. Its not the first time the projects been used by outside groups, but the new platform will give developers complete control of the front-end, and require only minimal input from the Watson team at IBM. Companies will still have to contract an instance of Watson from IBM, but once thats done, their programs will be able to pull questions and answers from the supercomputer in real time.