Data scraping tool for non-coding journalists launches

A tool which helps non-coding journalists scrape data from websites has launched in public beta today.

Import.io lets you extract data from any website into a spreadsheet simply by mousing over a few rows of information.

Until now import.io, which we reported on back in April, has been available in private developer preview and has been Windows only. It is now also available for Mac and is open to all.

Although import.io plans to charge for some services at a later date, there will always be a free option.

The London-based start-up is trying to solve the problem of the fact that there is "lots of data on the web, but it's difficult to get at", Andrew Fogg, founder of import.io, said in a webinar last week.

Those with the know-how can write a scraper or use an API to get at data, Fogg said. "But imagine if you could turn any website into a spreadsheet or API."

Uses for journalists

Journalists can find stories in data. For example, if I wanted to do a story on the type of journalism jobs being advertised and the salaries offered, I could research this by looking at various websites which advertise journalism jobs.

If I were to gather the data from four different jobs boards and enter the information manually into a spreadsheet it would take would take hours if not days; if I were to write a screen scraper for each of the sites it would require knowledge and would probably take a couple of hours. Using import.io I can create a single dataset from multiple sources in a few minutes.

I can then search and sort the dataset and find out different facts, such as how many unpaid internships are advertised, or how many editors are currently being sought.

How it works

When you download the import.io application you see a web browser. This browser allows you to enter a URL for any site you want to scrape data from.

To take the example of the jobs board, this is structured data, with the job role, description and salaries displayed.

The first step is to set up 'connectors' and to do this you need to teach the system where the data is on the page. This is done by hitting a 'record' button on the right of the browser window and mousing over a few examples, in this case advertised jobs. You then click 'train rows'.

It takes between two and five examples to teach import.io where all of the rows are, Fogg explained in the webinar.

The next step is to declare the type of data and add column names. For example there may be columns for 'job title', 'job description' and 'salary'. Data is then extracted into the table below the browser window.

Data from different websites can then be "mixed" into a single searchable database.

In the example used in the webinar, Fogg demonstrated how import.io could take data relating to rucksacks for sale on a shopping website. The tool can learn the "extraction pattern", Fogg explained, and apply that to to another product. So rather than mousing over the different rows of sleeping bags advertised, for example, import.io was automatically able to detect where the price and product details were on the page as it had learnt the structure from how the rucksacks were organised. The really smart bit is that the data from all products can then be automatically scraped and pulled into the spreadsheet. You can then search 'shoes' and find the data has already been pulled into your database.

When a site changes its code a screen scraper would become ineffective. Import.io has a "resilience to change", Fogg said. It runs tests twice a day and users get notified of any changes and can retrain a connector.

It is worth noting that a site that has been scraped will be able to detect that import.io has extracted the data as it will appear in the source site's web logs.

Case studies

A few organisations have already used import.io for data extraction. Fogg outlined three.

    British Red Cross

The British Red Cross wanted to create an iPhone app with data from the NHS Choices website. The NHS wanted the charity to use the data but the health site does not have an API.

By using import.io, data was scraped from the NHS site. The app is now in the iTunes store and users can use it to enter a postcode to find hospital information based on the data from the NHS site.

"It allowed them to build an API for a website where there wasn't one," Fogg said.

    Hewlett Packard

Fogg explained that Hewlett Packard wanted to monitor the prices of its laptops on retailers' websites.

They used import.io to scrape the data from the various sites and were able monitor the prices at which the laptops were being sold in real-time.

    Recruitment site

A US recruitment firm wanted to set up a system so that when any job vacancy appeared on a competitor's website, they could extract the details and push that into their Salesforce software. The initial solution was to write scrapers, Fogg said, but this was costly and in the end they gave up. Instead they used import.io to scrape the sites and collate the data.


Source: http://www.journalism.co.uk/news/data-scraping-tool-for-non-coding-journalists-launches/s2/a554002/

ScraperWiki lets anyone scrape Twitter data without coding

The Obama administration’s open data mandate announced on Thursday was made all the better by the unveiling of the new ScraperWiki service on Friday. If you’re not familiar with ScraperWiki, it’s a web-scraping service that has been around for a while but has primarily focused on users with some coding chops or data journalists willing to pay to have someone scrape data sets for them. Its new service, though, currently in beta, also makes it possible for anyone to scrape Twitter to create a custom data set without having to write a single line of code.

Taken alone, ScraperWiki isn’t that big of a deal, but it’s part of a huge revolution that has been called the democratization of data. More data is becoming available all the time — whether from the government, corportations or even our own lives — only it’s not of much use unless you’re able to do something with it. ScraperWiki is now one of a growing list of tools dedicated to helping everyone, not just expert data analysts or coders, analyze — and, in its case, generate — the data that matters to them.

After noticing a particularly large numbers of tweets in my stream about flight delays yesterday, I thought I’d test out ScraperWiki’s new Twitter search function by gathering a bunch of tweets directed to @United. The results — from 1,697 tweets dating back to May 3 — are pretty fun to play with, if not that surprising. (Also, I have no idea how far back the tweet search will go or how long it will take using the free account, which is limited to 30 minutes of compute time a day. I just stopped at some point so I could start digging in.)

First things first, I ran my query. Here’s what the data looks like viewed in a table in the ScraperWiki app.

Next, it’s a matter of analyzing it. ScraperWiki lets you view it in a table (like above), export it to Excel or query it using SQL, and will also summarize it for you. This being Twitter data, the natural thing to do seemed to be analyzing it for sentiment. One simple way to do this right inside the ScraperWiki table is to search for a particular term that might suggest joy or anger. I chose a certain four-letter word that begins with f.

Surprisingly, I only found eight instances. Here’s my favorite: “Your Customer Service is better than a hooker. I paid a bunch of money and you’re still…” (You probably get the idea.)

But if you read my “data for dummies” post from January, you know that we mere mortals have tools at our disposal for dealing with text data in a more refined way. IBM’s Many Eyes service won’t let me score tweets for sentiment, but I can get a pretty good idea overall by looking at how words are used. For this job, though, a simple word cloud won’t work, even after filtering out common words, @united and other obvious terms. Think of how “thanks” can be used sarcastically and you can see why.

Using the customized word tree, you can see that “thanks” sometimes means “thanks.” Other times, not so much. I know it’s easy to dwell on the negative, but consider this: “worst” had 28 hits while “best” had 15. One of those was referring to Tito’s vodka and at least three were referring to skyline views. (Click here to access it and search by whatever word you want.)

Here’s a phrase net filtering the results by phrases where the word “for” connects two words.

Anyhow, this was just a fast, simple and fairly crude example of what ScraperWiki now allows users to do, and how that resulting data can be combined with other tools to analyze and visualize it. Obviously, it’s more powerful if you can code, but new tools are supposedly on the way (remember, this is just a beta version) that should make it easier to scrape data from even more sources.

In the long term, though, services like ScraperWiki should become a lot more valuable as tools for helping us generate and analyze data rather than just believe what we’re told. Want to improve your small business, put your life in context or perhaps just write the best book report your teacher has ever seen? It’s getting easier every day.


Source: http://gigaom.com/2013/05/10/scraperwiki-lets-anyone-scrape-twitter-data-without-coding/

What is data scraping and how can I stop it?

Data scraping (also called web scraping) is the process of extracting information from websites. Data scraping focuses on transforming unstructured website content (usually HTML) into structured data which can be stored in a database or spreadsheet.

The way data is scraped from a website is similar to that used by search bots – human web browsing is simulated by using programs (bots) which extract (scrape) the data from a website.

Unfortunately, there is no efficient way to fully protect your website from data scraping. This is so because data scraping programs (also called data scrapers or web scrapers) obtain the same information as your regular web visitors.

Even if you block the IP address of a data scraper, this will not prevent it from accessing your website. Most data scraping bots use large IP address pools and automatically switch the IP address in case one IP gets blocked. And if you block too many IPs, you will most probably block many of your legitimate visitors.

One of the best ways to protect globally accessible data on a website is through copyright protection. This way you can legally protect the intellectual ownership of your website content.

Another way to protect your site content is to password protect it. This way your website data will be available only to people who can authenticate with the correct username and password.


Source: http://kb.siteground.com/what_is_data_scraping_and_how_can_i_stop_it/

WP Web Scraper

An easy to implement professional web scraper for WordPress. This can be used to display realtime data from any websites directly into your posts, pages or sidebar. Use this to include realtime stock quotes, cricket or soccer scores or any other generic content. The scraper is an extension of WP_HTTP class for scraping and uses phpQuery or xpath for parsing HTML. Features include:

    Can be easily implemented using the button in the post / page editor.
    Configurable caching of scraped data. Cache timeout in minutes can be defined in minutes for every scrap.
    Configurable Useragent for your scraper can be set for every scrap.
    Scrap output can be displayed thru custom template tag, shortcode in page, post and sidebar (through a text widget).
    Other configurable settings like timeout, disabling shortcode etc.
    Error handling - Silent fail, error display, custom error message or display expired cache.
    Clear or replace a regex pattern from the scrap before output.
    Option to pass post arguments to a URL to be scraped.
    Dynamic conversion of scrap to specified character encoding (using incov) to scrap data from a site using different charset.
    Create scrap pages on the fly using dynamic generation of URLs to scrap or post arguments based on your page's get or post arguments.
    Callback function to parse the scraped data.

For demos and support, visit the WP Web Scraper project page. Comments appreciated.

Tags: curl, html, import, page, phpquery, Post, Realtime, sidebar, stock market, web scraping, xpath   



Source: http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-web-scrapper/

Google scraper to download data from Google search pages

Web scraping involves extraction of data from websites and converting them to usable format. There are many web scraping tools designed specific purposes like white pages scraper, amazon scraper, email address scraper, customer contract scraper etc. Google scraper is one such web scraping application which is used to extract google search results. This application will gather useful information from search results of Google which can be helpful in preparation of prospective databases with potential customers, email lists, online price comparison, real estate data, job posting information and customer demographics. Many people nowadays use web scraping to minimize the effort involved in manual extraction of data from websites.

You can find the details of customers in particular locality be searching through the white pages of that region. Also, if you want to gather email address or phone numbers of customers, you can do that with email address extractor. Google scraper will be useful to scrape google results and store them in text file, Spread sheets or database. The data scraping is automated function done by software application to extract data from websites by simulation human exploration of web through scripts like Perl, Python, and JavaScript etc. The data scraping could be great tool for programmers and can have lot of value for the money.

Also data collected through web scraping tool is accurate and ensures faster results. You can use this to collect email address of potential customers for your email marketing campaign to promote your products. You can search for relevant information about customer products. If you want to download images of products you can just enter the relevant keyword and google scraper will automatically extract the data from you google images page. You can generate sales leads and expand your business by using scraping tools which can save lot of time and money.



Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Google-scraper-to-download-data-from-Google-search-pages/4254108/

Screen Scraper Software

Applications for Monitoring Competitor Pricing by using screen scraping.

In a world with seamless integration of internet information, more and more web data extraction services can be found providing reliable ways to monitor competitive pricing for your business. In addition to streamlining content, these companies gather resourceful information. Which is of course a vital asset for any company or private group's use. Not only for collecting and refining web content, you can also make use of gathered information in an organized form for purposes of intelligence, study, and storage for future use. Finding this form of web extraction service for you can take some seriously contemplated decision making, if you don't know where to look. But, with this article you will hopefully find that deciding which one best suites your need doesn't have to be headache inducing in the end.

The first name that comes to mind for monitoring competitor pricing would have to be Mozenda. Being the highest rated on sites like theeasybee.com, they have become a optimal solution for web content scraping of this nature. Mozenda offers a extremely easy, and organized approach with it's carefully crafted user interface. Collecting detailed marketing and research data could not be made simpler than they have made it. Dedicated to the search of online content for projects like competitive pricing, lead generation, or scientific research, you will find that Mozenda has been designed to fit all of your web extraction needs. But this is only a mere glimpse of what it has to offer. Mozenda converts your collected web data into many useful formats like CSV, TSV, XML, and RSS just to name a few. Also, for those new to web extraction, they even offer to set up your first project free of charge. But, I doubt you would even need that with all of the resources made available to you. They have a section on their page offering instructional videos that show you how to set up your very own projects extremely quick, and easily. In addition to the already impressive capabilities of Mozenda's software, they offer many sub services in order to get your job done correctly as well. Giving you more time to actually use the information collected in your projects any manner you like.

At a not too distant second is Kapow Technologies. Proudly claiming to deliver business solutions involving web data in only a fraction of the time as their competitors in software development. They also boast the ability to achieve the same end results in only a fraction of cost as well. Having gained much acclaim with their partnership with IBM in order to create a Web 2.0 Expo application for the IPhone in less than three hours, they definitely have the expertise to carry out the much simpler project ideas like these. One major attraction to their applications are it's abilities to extract with absolutely no coding, through it's exclusive point-and-click develop technology. They are a unique enterprise, capable of wrapping any existing web content or API with this lossless technique.

To see which applications and services work best for you, it is highly suggested that you take advantage of the free trial downloads that are made available on these sites. Most come with a two week test period, which allows more than enough time to figure out which one is best suited for your optimal business performance. Monitoring your competitor's pricing has been made a extremely easy task with all of the accessible options. Luckily, tedious and time-consuming methods are completely a thing of the past.



Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Screen-Scraper-Software/3623340/

Information About Craigslist Scraping Tools

Information is one amongst the foremost vital assets to a business.Whatever trade the business relies in, while not the crucialinformation that helps it to operate, it'll be left to die.However, you are doing not ought to hunt round the net or through pilesof resources so as to urge the data that you just would like. Instead,you can merely take the data that you just have already got and use itto your advantage.

With info being thus promptly accessible for big corporations, itmay be not possible to guess what precisely a corporation can would like this muchdata and data from. completely different jobs together with everything frommedical records analysis, to selling uses net hand tool technology inorder to compile info, analyze it and so use it for his or her ownpurposes.

Another reason that a corporation could utilize an internet hand tool is fordetection of changes. for instance, if you entered into a contract witha company to confirm that their net link stayed on your online page forsix months, they may use an internet hand tool to form certain that you just do notback out. this fashion they additionally don't ought to manually check yourwebsite a day to confirm that the link remains there. This savesthem from wasting their valuable labor prices.

Finally you'll be able to use an internet hand tool to urge all of the info concerning acompany that you just would like. whether or not you wish to seek out out what differentwebsites ar speech concerning your company, otherwise you merely need to seek out allof the data a few bound topic, employing a net hand tool is asimple, fast and simple answer.

There ar many various corporations that give you with the abilityto scrape the net for info. one amongst the businesses to lookat is Mozenda. Mozenda permits you to setup custom programs that scrapethe net for all differing types of knowledge, relying upon the exactneeds that your company has. Another net scraping company that ispopular is thirty Digits net Extractor. they assist you to extract theinformation that you just would like from a spread of internet sites and webapplications. you'll be able to use any type of alternative services to urge all ofyour information scraped from the online.

Web information scraping could be a growing business. There ar such a lot of industriesand businesses that use the data they get from net datascraping to accomplish quite bit. whether or not you would like to scrape information inorder to seek out personal info, past histories, compile databasesof factual info or another use it's terribly real and potential todo so! but, so as to use an internet hand tool effectively you mustmake certain to use a real company.

don't come with any company off thestreet, check that to visualize them against others within the trade. Ifworst involves worse, check drive many completely different corporations. Thenstick with the online hand tool that best meets your wants. check that thatyou let the online hand tool work for you, after all, the net is apowerful tool in your business!



Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Information-About-Craigslist-Scraping-Tools/7507586/

Craigslist Scraping Data Extraction Tools

It is Associate in Nursing ever developing company that is serving the folks. The craigslist may be a net services company. it's one among st the leading issues in its category. the realm of operation has mature to over forty five countries round the world. This websites may be a specialist in that includes sales promotions.

all types of ads square measure displayed here starting from paid ads and free ads.

Ads of jobs, services, personal sales and lots of a lot of square measure displayed here. Even discussion forums square measure gift here in order that folks will discuss what they like. Their major supply of sales come back from the paid ads associated with jobs. it's thought to be the simplest web site without charge sales promotions on-line.

many folks take into account this because the best for looking jobs, service sand lots of a lot of. there's no marvel that it's stratified at the 33th spot within the whole world. within the u. s. of America it's thought-about because the seventh best web site overall Web Data Extraction Software, Scripts.
And the most astonishing reality is that it manages this whole business by to a small degree variety of staff. There square measure solely regarding thirty staff in it. there's no surprise it's should for those staff to be terribly economical. The success depends upon the co - ordination of those folks. folks will build cash by finance during this business.

If one trains himself and provides his commitment he will undoubtedly become extremely roaring. except for this it's crucial to settle on a tool for posting ads effectively. someone WHO posts several ads on Craigslist is aware of the work load and time it takes. however this stress and cargo are often overcome by employing a sensible Craigslist Posting tool. particularly if the posting tool is all automatic in posting ads it's another advantage. however it's not a straightforward task to zero in on one software package and shopping for it.

as a result of the quantity of software on the market within the net is very large Web Scraper Download.

You can have a headache in selecting one. however those efforts square measure worthwhile as a result of Craigslist is among the simplest which may communicate your ads to the whole world. it's Associate in Nursing economic and a good thanks to develop your business. There square measure lots of craigslist posting tools on the market that is absolutely automatic.

one among st the simplest ways that to choose a tool is to research the options and it should have the automated posting options. And conjointly each product offers a free trial for victimization it. when victimization the trial we are able to decide a tool and die. By these facilities it's simple for analyzing the merchandise.


Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Craigslist-Scraping-Data-Extraction-Tools/7529228/

Easy Answer To The Question, What Is Screen Scraping

What is screen scraping? First of all it isnâEUR(TM)t data mining. People take it for an advance from of data mining but in reality it is just opposite. It is a program that extracts

more than simple data. It drags images and even large files from websites and this is what makes it different from simple data mining.

This program is used for different purposes like contact and address list extraction. Contact details of Internet users are beneficial for websites that approach customers for

business. Instead of waiting for visitors to come and provide their contact details, website owners could get the contacts of a large number of Internet users. The process is

simple and it takes shortest possible time to present the data in a desired format.

It is a program hence it is made. There are groups that have mastered the art of making software that could draw load of data from different websites. You need data; you could

contact such a group and get a program made for you. It wonâEUR(TM)t cost you a fortune nor would you need waiting for long to get the program made. The moment you would

forward your request; the programmers would start working on it.

What is screen scraping? This question could be better answered by the tasks it does. It is used for data extraction like extracting products from suppliers, pricing that

competitor sites are using, monitoring social media and archiving online data to help make right choice. Simple data mining canâEUR(TM)t do this job and if you try, you would

find that it is a time consuming and laborious job.

Greatest advantage of this program is that it produces required data within a short time. There is no data loss and also you get latest data. Is it possible with manual data

mining? No and for this reason data mining couldnâEUR(TM)t be the answer of what is screen scraping? Online businesses run on data. They generate tons of data every day.

This data could be scraped using a program and not mined manually.

What is screen scraping? It is a process of simplifying data extraction and also making a website more user-friendly. Filling web forms sometimes becomes a tedious affair and

that is why a few visitors fill online forms. With perfect programming, a website could make its forms user-friendly and help visitors fill the data by clicking at the boxes.


Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Easy-Answer-To-The-Question-What-Is-Screen-Scraping/7715438/

The Manifold Advantages Of Investing In An Efficient Web Scraping Service

Bitrake is an extremely professional and effective online data mining service that would enable you to combine content from several webpages in a very quick and convenient method and deliver the content in any structure you may desire in the most accurate manner. Web scraping may be referred as web harvesting or data scraping a website and is the special method of extracting and assembling details from various websites with the help from web scraping tool along with web scrapping software. It is also connected to web indexing that indexes details on the online web scraper utilizing bot (web scrapping tool). The dissimilarity is that web scraping is actually focused on obtaining unstructured details from diverse resources into a planned arrangement that can be utilized and saved, for instance a database or worksheet. Frequent services that utilize online web scraper are price-comparison sites or diverse kinds of mash-up websites. The most fundamental method for obtaining details from diverse resources is individual copy-paste. Never web scraping theless, the objective with Bitrake is to create an effective software to the last element. Other methods comprise DOM parsing, upright aggregation platforms and even HTML parses. Web scraping might be in opposition to the conditions of usage of some sites. The enforceability of the terms is uncertain.

While complete replication of original content will in numerous cases is prohibited, in the United States, court ruled in Feist Publications v Rural Telephone Service that replication details is permissible. Bitrate service allows you to obtain specific details from the net without technical information; you just need to send the explanation of your explicit requirements by email and Bitrate will set everything up for you. The latest self-service is formatted through your preferred web browser and formation needs only necessary facts of either Ruby or Javascript. The main constituent of this web scraping tool is a thoughtfully made crawler that is very quick and simple to arrange. The web scraping software permits the users to identify domains, crawling tempo, filters and preparation making it extremely flexible. Every web page brought by the crawler is effectively processed by a draft that is accountable for extracting and arranging the essential content. Data scraping a website is configured with UI, and in the full-featured package this will be easily completed by Bitrake. However, Bitrake has two vital capabilities, which are:

- Data mining from sites to a planned custom-format (web scraping tool)

- Real-time assessment details on the internet.



Source: http://goarticles.com/article/The-Manifold-Advantages-Of-Investing-In-An-Efficient-Web-Scraping-Service/5509184/

Understanding Web Scraping

It is evident that the invention of the internet is one of the greatest inventions of life. This is so because it allows quick recovery of information from large databases. Though the internet has its own negative aspects, its advantages outweigh the demerits f using it. It is therefore the objective of every researcher to understand the concept of web scraping and learn the basics of collecting accurate data from the internet. The following are some of the skills researchers need to know and keep them abreast of:

Understanding File Extensions in Web Scraping

In web scraping the first step to know is file extensions. For instance a site ending with dot-com is either a sales or commercial site. With the involvement of sales activity in such a website, there is a possibility that the data contained therein is inaccurate. Sites that may be ending with dot-gov are sites owned by various governments. The information found on such websites is accurate since they are reviewed by professionals regularly. Sites ending with dot-org are sites owned by non-governmental organizations that are not after making profit. There is a greater probability that the information contained is not accurate. Sites ending with dot-edu are owned by educational institutions. The information found on such sites is sourced by professionals and is of high quality. In case you have no understanding concerning a particular website it is important that get more information from expert data mining services.

Search Engine Limitations in Web Scraping

After understanding the file extensions, the next step is to understand search engine limitations applied to web scraping. These include process such as file extension, filtering or any other parameters. The following are some of the restrictions that need to typed after your search term: for instance if you key in “finance” and then click “search” all sites will be listed from the dot-com directory that contain the word finance on its website. If you key in “finance site.gov,” of course with the quotation marks, only the government sites that have the word finance will be listed. The same applies to other sites with different file extensions.

Advanced Parameters in Web Scraping

When performing web scraping it is important to understand more skills beyond the file extension. Therefore there is a need to understand particular search terms. For instance if you key in “software company in India” without the quotation marks, the search engines will display thousands of websites having “software”, “company” and India in their search terms. If you key in “Software Company in India” with the quotation marks, the search engines will only display sites that contain the exact phrase “software company in India” within their text.

This article forms the basis of web scraping. Collection of data needs to be carried out by experts and high quality tools. This is to ensure that the quality and accuracy of the data scraped is of high standards. The information extracted from that data has wide applications in business operations including decision making and predictive analytics.


Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Understanding-Web-Scraping/6771732/

A Solution to Mobile Phone Data Issues

One subject of mobile phone ownership that cocmes up time after time is data usage. Data usage can be a controversial area for both the consumer and the mobile network but with a little help there is a solution. The networks continually don’t help themselves, they have a poor track record when monitoring and reporting data usage back to the end user. We see many times that the billing provided can be misleading or altogether inept for the purpose of monitoring the spend. With some networks the information is hidden within a very complex report or the usage is only recorded when the data bundle is exceeded. Once exceeded the cost becomes disproportionate to going over the bundled minutes so regularly we have seen bills of £300 and above for a one month overage on data.

This can be where the problems really begin as you are now in the situation of knowing there is something wrong, the bill doesn’t help so you call the network. At this point you will more than likely get the stock answer as to why the problem has occurred which is ‘we don’t know’. They don’t know because when data is consumed the network record the information as usage by volume of consumption and not what the data has been used for. So imagine how you would feel if you had a £300 overage in a month and the networks were unable to shed any light on it, this happens all the time.

What we need to do is understand how much data we need then ensure we put measures in to assess the usage. Smartphone’s consume data as a natural process continually updating the apps and operating systems. In fact they consume so much data that even if you don’t pick the phone up and leave it switched on it will consume on average 200MB per month. This is the point where the networks and re-sellers start to cause issues as they can often sell Smartphone packages with data bundles less than 200MB. Obviously the consumer then gets hit with a costly and unnecessary bill all within the first month of owning their new mobile phone. To prevent this you have to choose a bundle somewhere around the 500MB mark to allow for generic browsing and updates. You can still exceed this if choosing to download continually so there has to be an element of management by the user.

The first point to make is that a Smartphone will use data direct from the mobile network which eats into you data bundle and also over Wi-Fi. Wi-Fi usage does not cost the Smartphone airtime account so if you set the Smartphone to automatically select known Wi-Fi points when in range you will dramatically change the bundled data usage. It should become a habit that Wi-Fi is used to download anything out of the ordinary leaving plenty of the network bundle left for generic updates.

To help further there is an App called 3G watchdog that will help to manage the volumes used. Download this app from the App markets and install on the handset. There are many bespoke setting for the software so take your time to understand how it all works. What the correct setting will give is a measure at any point in the month of how many MB’s used either by Wi-Fi or 3g. Having the information then lets you adjust your usage or split in usage accordingly making you more aware of reaching the limit. The app will project forward your present use and tell you how many MBS will be used by the time your month end arrives.

It also has a shutdown system just in case you experience a virus or background app consuming data without your knowledge. Once again all you need to do is adjust the setting and tell the software to either alert you or shut down the data when a user defined percentage of data is achieved. This is a very key part to not exceeding the data bundle as in most overage cases a data heavy application is running in the background of the phone without the user’s knowledge. This simple feature on 3G watchdog will ensure that even if that happens the data will deactivate automatically and there is no affect on the billing.


Source: http://goarticles.com/article/A-Solution-to-Mobile-Phone-Data-Issues/6708243/

Web Scraping and Financial Matters

Many marketers value the process of harvesting data on the financial sector. They are also conversant with the challenges concerning the collection and processing of the data. Web scraping techniques and technologies are used for tracking and recognizing patterns that are found within the data. This is quite useful to businesses as it shifts through the layers of data, remove unrelated data and only leave the data that has meaningful relationships. This enables companies anticipate rather than just reacting to the customer and financial needs. Web scraping in combination with other complementary technologies and sound business processes, it can be used in reinforcing and redefining financial analysis.

Objectives of web scraping

The following are some of the web scraping services objectives that are covered in this article:

1. Discus show the customization of data and data mining tools may be developed for financial data analysis.

2. What is the usage pattern, in terms of purpose and the categories for the need for financial analysis?

3. Is the development of a tool for financial analysis through web scraping techniques possible?

Web scraping can be regarded as the procedure of extracting or harvesting knowledge for the large quantities of data. It is also known as Knowledge Discovery in Database (KDD). This implies that web scraping involves data collection, data management, database creation and the analysis of data and its understanding.

The following are some of the steps that are involved in web scraping service:

1. Data cleaning. This is the process of removing nose and the inconsistent data. This process is important as it only ensures that only important data should be integrated. This process saves time that will be consumed in the next processes.

2. Data integration. This is the processes of combining multiple sources of information. This process is quite important as it ensure that there is sufficient data for selection purposes.

3. Data selection. This is retrieving of data from databases that are relevant from the data in question.

4. Data transformation. It is the process of consolidating or transforming data into forms, which are appropriate for scraping by performing aggregation operations and summary.
5. Data mining. This is the process where intelligent methods are used in extracting data patterns.

6. Pattern evaluation. It is the identification of the patterns that are quite interesting and ones that represent knowledge and the interesting measures.

7. Knowledge presentation. It is the process where knowledge representation techniques and visualization are used in representing extracted data to the user.

Data Warehouse

Data warehouse may be defined as a store where information that has been mined from different sources, and stored under a unified schema and it resides at a single site.

Majority of banks and financial institutions offer a wide variety of baking services that include checking account balances, savings, customer and business transactions. Other services that may be offered by such companies include investment and credit services. Stock and insurance services may also be offered.

Through web scraping services it is possible for companies to gather data from financial and banking sectors, which may be relatively reliable, high quality and complete. Such data is quite important is it facilitates the analysis and the decision making of a company.



Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Web-Scraping-and-Financial-Matters/6771760/

Data Extraction,Web Screen Scraping Tool,Mozenda Scraper

Web Scraping

Web scraping, also known as Web data extraction or Web harvesting, is a software method of extracting data from websites. Web scraping is closely related and similar to Web indexing, which indexes Web content. Web indexing is the method used by most search engines. The difference with Web scraping is that it focuses more on the translation of unstructured content on the Web, characteristically in rich text format like that of HTML, into controlled data that can be analyzed stored and in a spreadsheet or database. Web scraping also makes Web browsing more efficient and productive for users. For example, Web scraping automates weather data monitoring, online price comparison, and website change recognition and data integration.

This clever method that uses specially coded software programs is also used by public agencies. Government operations and Law enforcement authorities use data scrape methods to develop information files useful against crime and evaluation of criminal behaviors. Medical industry researchers get the benefit and use of Web scraping to gather up data and analyze statistics concerning diseases such as AIDS and the most recent strain of influenza like the recent swine flu H1N1 epidemic.

Data scraping is an automatic task performed by a software program that extracts data output from another program, one that is more individual friendly. Data scraping is a helpful device for programmers who have to generate a line through a legacy system when it is no longer reachable with up to date hardware. The data generated with the use of data scraping takes information from something that was planned for use by an end user.

One of the top providers of Web scraping software, Mozenda, is a Software as a Service company that provides many kinds of users the ability to affordably and simply extract and administer web data. Using Mozenda, individuals will be able to set up agents that regularly extract data then store this data and finally publish the data to numerous locations. Once data is in the Mozenda system, individuals may format and repurpose data and use it in other applications or just use it as intelligence. All data in the Mozenda system is safe and sound and is hosted in a class A data warehouses and may be accessed by users over the internet safely through the Mozenda Web Console.

One other comparative software is called the Djuggler. The Djuggler is used for creating web scrapers and harvesting competitive intelligence and marketing data sought out on the web. With Dijuggles, scripts from a Web scraper may be stored in a format ready for quick use. The adaptable actions supported by the Djuggler software allows for data extraction from all kinds of webpages including dynamic AJAX, pages tucked behind a login, complicated unstructured HTML pages, and much more. This software can also export the information to a variety of formats including Excel and other database programs.

Web scraping software is a ground-breaking device that makes gathering a large amount of information fairly trouble free. The program has many implications for any person or companies who have the need to search for comparable information from a variety of places on the web and place the data into a usable context. This method of finding widespread data in a short amount of time is relatively easy and very cost effective. Web scraping software is used every day for business applications, in the medical industry, for meteorology purposes, law enforcement, and government agencies.


Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Data-Extraction-Web-Screen-Scraping-Tool-Mozenda-Scraper/3635541/

Challenges in Effective Web Data Mining

Data collection and web data mining are critical processes for many companies and the marketing companies today. The techniques usually used include search engines,

topic-based searches and directories. Web data mining is necessary for any business that wants to create data warehouses by harvesting data from the internet. This is so

because high-quality and intelligent information may not be harvested from the internet easily. Such information is critical as it enables you to get desired results and the

business intelligence in demand.
Keyword-based searches are important in marketing of company products. They are usually affected by the following factors:
• Irrelevant pages. The use of common and general keywords on the search engines yields millions of web pages. Some of thesepages may be irrelevant and may not be of help

to the user.
• Ambiguous results.This is usually caused by multi-variant or similar keyword semantics. A name would be an animal, movie or even a sport accessory. This results in web

pages that are different what you are actually searching for.
• Possibility of missing some web pages.There is a great possibility of missing the most relevant information that is contained on web pages that are not indexed on a given

keyword.
One of the factors that prohibit the usage of web data mining is the effectiveness of search engine crawlers. This is widely evidenced by lack of access of the entire web due to

search engine crawlers and bot.This can be attributed partly tobandwidth limitations. It is important to understand that there are thousands of databases on the internet that can

deliver well-maintained information, high quality and are not easily accessed by crawlers.
In web data mining it is important to understand that majority of search engines have limited choices or alternatives for keyword query combination. For instance, yahoo and

Google offer option like phrase and even the exact matches that may limit even the search results. It is usually demands more efforts and even time and thereby get the most

important and relevant information.The human behavior and the alternatives usually change of time.This therefore implies that web pages need to be updated frequently and

there by reflect on the emerging trends. It is important to realize that there is a limited space for web data mining. This is so because the information that currently exists is

heavily relied on keyword-based indices. This does not apply for the real data.
It is important to realize that web data mining is an important tool for any business. It is therefore important to embrace this technology to solve data crisis problems. There are

several limitations and many challenges which may have resulted in the quest of effectively and efficiently in rediscovering the use of web resources. However, irrespective of the

challenges of web data mining, this technology is an effective tool that can be employed in many technological and scientific fields. It is therefore paramount to embrace this

technology and use it fully in order to realize your corporate goals.


Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Challenges-in-Effective-Web-Data-Mining/6771744/

Web Screen Scrape: Quick and Affordable Data Mining Service

Getting contact details of people living in a certain area or practicing a certain profession isnâEUR(TM)t a difficult job as you could get the data from websites. You can even get the data in short time so that you could take advantage of it. Web screen scrape service could make data mining a breeze for you.

Extracting data from websites is a tedious job but there isnâEUR(TM)t any need to mine the data manually as you could get it electronically. The data could be extracted from websites and presented in a readable format like spreadsheet and data file that you could store for future use. The data would be accurate and since you would get the data in short time, you could rely on the information. If your business relies on the data then you should consider using this service.

How much this data extraction service would cost? It wonâEUR(TM)t cost a fortune. It isnâEUR(TM)t expensive. Service charge is determined on the number of hours put in data mining. You can locate a service provider and ask him to give quote for his services. If youâEUR(TM)re satisfied with the service and the charge, you could assign the data mining work to the person.

ThereâEUR(TM)s hardly any business that doesnâEUR(TM)t need data. For instance some businesses look for competitor pricing to set their price index. These companies employ a team for data mining. Similarly you can find businesses downloading online directories to get contact details of their targeted customers. Employing people for data mining is a convenient way to get online data but the process is lengthy and frustrating. On the other hand, service is quick and affordable.

You need specific data; you can get it without spending countless hours in downloading data from websites. All you need to do to get the data is contact a credible web screen scrape service provider and assign the data mining job to him. The service provider would present the data in the desired format and in the expected time. As far as budget of the project is concerned, you can negotiate the price with the service provider.

Web screen scrape service is a boon for websites. This service is quite beneficial for websites that rely on data like tour and travel, marketing and PR companies. If you need online data then you should consider hiring this service instead of wasting time on data mining.



Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Web-Screen-Scrape-Quick-and-Affordable-Data-Mining-Service/7783303/

Why to Go With a Web Screen Scraping Program?

There is a tough competition in the market, nowadays. Business owners are trying to get the best and beneficial result in their business growth. At present, there are different kinds of businesses available online. With the support of their specific websites, business owners are promoting their products as well as services online. Currently, most of the people are internet users and in order to get their contact details, websites owners are availing the benefits of software that can help them to get the desired data in a very short time. Websites are now extracting relevant data of internet users with the support of web screen scraping software, these days. Undoubtedly, data collection from websites is a time consuming and laborious job and thus one need to have a dedicated team to do so. However today, with the support of website screen scraping program, it has become so easy to extract required data from websites as it was never before.

Screen scraping is really a beneficial program that can help people to download the desired data in an appropriate format. Therefore, it would be great for people to select a screen scraping program instead of going with data mining team. There is no denying to this fact that this software would make your job much easier than before. There are a number of benefits of using this software for the people in different ways. First of all, this program enables you to save lots of your precious time and to get your particular project done in a very short time. If there is need to collect contact details of targeted audiences from some specific websites then it can easily be done with the support of this program.

The best thing about this software is that it would help your data mining team to get rid of the tedious job of data mining from different websites. software will not only make your data mining team free from the tedious job but also make you able to utilize them in some other productive projects of your company. With the support of this software, you will surely experience great improvement in your teamâEUR(TM)s productivity. This program will surely make you able to get the data in the same format you are looking for. It will allow you to get the required data in suitable format. So, what are you waiting for? Leave all your data extracting problems on this software and enjoy its benefits!



Source: http://goarticles.com/article/Why-to-Go-With-a-Web-Screen-Scraping-Program/7803789/

Web Scraper Shortcode WordPress Plugin Review

This short post is on the WP-plugin called Web Scraper Shortcode, that enables one to retrieve a portion of a web page or a whole page and insert it directly into a post. This plugin might be used for getting fresh data or images from web pages for your WordPress driven page without even visiting it. More scraping plugins and sowtware you can find in here.

To install it in WordPress go to Plugins -> Add New.
Usage

The plugin scrapes the page content and applies parameters to this scraped page if specified. To use the plugin just insert the

[web-scraper ]

shortcode into the HTML view of the WordPress page where you want to display the excerpts of a page or the whole page. The parameters are as follows:

    url (self explanatory)
    element – the dom navigation element notation, similar to XPath.
    limit – the maximum number of elements to be scraped and inserted if the element notation points to several of them (like elements of the same class).

The use of the plugin is of the dom (Data Object Model) notation, where consecutive dom nodes are stated like node1.node2; for example: element = ‘div.img’. The specific element scrape goes thru ‘#notation’. Example: if you want to scrape several ‘div’ elements of the class ‘red’ (<div class=’red’>…<div>), you need to specify the element attribute this way: element = ‘div#red’.
How to find DOM notation?

But for inexperienced users, how is it possible to find the dom notation of the desired element(s) from the web page? Web Developer Tools are a handy means for this. I would refer you to this paragraph on how to invoke Web Developer Tools in the browser (Google Chrome) and select a single page element to inspect it. As you select it with the ‘loupe’ tool, on the bottom line you’ll see the blue box with the element’s dom notation:


The plugin content

As one who works with web scraping, I was curious about  the means that the plugin uses for scraping. As I looked at the plugin code, it turned out that the plugin acquires a web page through ‘simple_html_dom‘ class:

    require_once(‘simple_html_dom.php’);
    $html = file_get_html($url);
    then the code performs iterations over the designated elements with the set limit

Pitfalls

    Be careful if you put two or more [web-scraper] shortcodes on your website, since downloading other pages will drastically slow the page load speed. Even if you want only a small element, the PHP engine first loads the whole page and then iterates over its elements.
    You need to remember that many pictures on the web are indicated by shortened URLs. So when such an image gets extracted it might be visible to you in this way: , since the URL is shortened and the plugin does not take note of  its base URL.
    The error “Fatal error: Call to a member function find() on a non-object …” will occur if you put this shortcode in a text-overloaded post.

Summary

I’d recommend using this plugin for short posts to be added with other posts’ elements. The use of this plugin is limited though.



Source: http://extract-web-data.com/web-scraper-shortcode-wordpress-plugin-review/

Visual Web Ripper: Using External Input Data Sources

Sometimes it is necessary to use external data sources to provide parameters for the scraping process. For example, you have a database with a bunch of ASINs and you need to scrape all product information for each one of them. As far as Visual Web Ripper is concerned, an input data source can be used to provide a list of input values to a data extraction project. A data extraction project will be run once for each row of input values.

An input data source is normally used in one of these scenarios:

    To provide a list of input values for a web form
    To provide a list of start URLs
    To provide input values for Fixed Value elements
    To provide input values for scripts

Visual Web Ripper supports the following input data sources:

    SQL Server Database
    MySQL Database
    OleDB Database
    CSV File
    Script (A script can be used to provide data from almost any data source)

To see it in action you can download a sample project that uses an input CSV file with Amazon ASIN codes to generate Amazon start URLs and extract some product data. Place both the project file and the input CSV file in the default Visual Web Ripper project folder (My Documents\Visual Web Ripper\Projects).

For further information please look at the manual topic, explaining how to use an input data source to generate start URLs.


Source: http://extract-web-data.com/visual-web-ripper-using-external-input-data-sources/

Scraping Amazon.com with Screen Scraper

Let’s look how to use Screen Scraper for scraping Amazon products having a list of asins in external database.

Screen Scraper is designed to be interoperable with all sorts of databases and web-languages. There is even a data-manager that allows one to make a connection to a database (MySQL, Amazon RDS, MS SQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, etc), and then the scripting in screen-scraper is agnostic to the type of database.

Let’s go through a sample scrape project you can see it at work. I don’t know how well you know Screen Scraper, but I assume you have it installed, and a MySQL database you can use. You need to:

    Make sure screen-scraper is not running as workbench or server
    Put the Amazon (Scraping Session).sss file in the “screen-scraper enterprise edition/import” directory.
    Put the mysql-connector-java-5.1.22-bin.jar file in the “screen-scraper enterprise edition/lib/ext” directory.
    Create a MySQL database for the scrape to use, and import the amazon.sql file.
    Put the amazon.db.config file in the “screen-scraper enterprise edition/input” directory and edit it to contain proper settings to connect to your database.
    Start the screen scraper workbench

Since this is a very simple scrape, you just want to run it in the workbench (most of the time you want to run scrapes in server mode). Start the workbench, and you will see the Amazon scrape in there, and you can just click the “play” button.

Note that a breakpoint comes up for each item. It would be easy to save the scraped details to a database table or file if you want. Also see in the database the “id_status” changes as each item is scraped.

When the scrape is run, it looks in the database for products marked “not scraped”, so when you want to re-run the scrapes, you need to:

UPDATE asin
SET `id_status` = 0

Have a nice scraping! ))

P.S. We thank Jason Bellows from Ekiwi, LLC for such a great tutorial.


Source: http://extract-web-data.com/scraping-amazon-com-with-screen-scraper/

Using External Input Data in Off-the-shelf Web Scrapers

There is a question I’ve wanted to shed some light upon for a long time already: “What if I need to scrape several URL’s based on data in some external database?“.

For example, recently one of our visitors asked a very good question (thanks, Ed):

    “I have a large list of amazon.com asin. I would like to scrape 10 or so fields for each asin. Is there any web scraping software available that can read each asin from a database and form the destination url to be scraped like http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/{asin} and scrape the data?”

This question impelled me to investigate this matter. I contacted several web scraper developers, and they kindly provided me with detailed answers that allowed me to bring the following summary to your attention:
Visual Web Ripper

An input data source can be used to provide a list of input values to a data extraction project. A data extraction project will be run once for each row of input values. You can find the additional information here.
Web Content Extractor

You can use the -at”filename” command line option to add new URLs from TXT or CSV file:

    WCExtractor.exe projectfile -at”filename” -s

projectfile: the file name of the project (*.wcepr) to open.
filename – the file name of the CSV or TXT file that contains URLs separated by newlines.
-s – starts the extraction process

You can find some options and examples here.
Mozenda

Since Mozenda is cloud-based, the external data needs to be loaded up into the user’s Mozenda account. That data can then be easily used as part of the data extracting process. You can construct URLs, search for strings that match your inputs, or carry through several data fields from an input collection and add data to it as part of your output. The easiest way to get input data from an external source is to use the API to populate data into a Mozenda collection (in the user’s account). You can also input data in the Mozenda web console by importing a .csv file or importing one through our agent building tool.

Once the data is loaded into the cloud, you simply initiate building a Mozenda web agent and refer to that Data list. By using the Load page action and the variable from the inputs, you can construct a URL like http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/%asin%.
Helium Scraper

Here is a video showing how to do this with Helium Scraper:


The video shows how to use the input data as URLs and as search terms. There are many other ways you could use this data, way too many to fit in a video. Also, if you know SQL, you could run a query to get the data directly from an external MS Access database like
SELECT * FROM [MyTable] IN "C:\MyDatabase.mdb"

Note that the database needs to be a “.mdb” file.
WebSundew Data Extractor
Basically this allows using input data from external data sources. This may be CSV, Excel file or a Database (MySQL, MSSQL, etc). Here you can see how to do this in the case of an external file, but you can do it with a database in a similar way (you just need to write an SQL script that returns the necessary data).
In addition to passing URLs from the external sources you can pass other input parameters as well (input fields, for example).
Screen Scraper

Screen Scraper is really designed to be interoperable with all sorts of databases. We have composed a separate article where you can find a tutorial and a sample project about scraping Amazon products based on a list of their ASINs.


Source: http://extract-web-data.com/using-external-input-data-in-off-the-shelf-web-scrapers/

Facts on Data Mining

Data mining is the process of examining a data set to extract certain patterns. Companies use this process to determine the outcome of their existing goals. They summarize this information into useful methods to create revenue and/or cut costs. When search engines are accessed, they begin to build lists of links from the first page it accesses. It continues this process throughout the site until it reaches the root page. This data not only includes text, but also numbers and facts.

Data mining focuses on consumers in relation to both "internal" (price, product positioning), and "external" (competition, demographics) factors which help determine consumer price, customer satisfaction, and corporate profits. It also provides a link between separate transactions and analytical systems. Four types of relationships are sought with data mining:

o Classes - information used to increase traffic
o Clusters - grouped to determine consumer preferences or logical relationships
o Associations - used to group products normally bought together (i.e., bacon, eggs; milk, bread)
o Patterns - used to anticipate behavior trends

This process provides numerous benefits to businesses, governments, society, and especially individuals as a whole. It starts with a cleaning process which removes errors and ensures consistency. Algorithms are then used to "mine" the data to establish patterns. With all new technology, there are positives and negatives. One negative issue that arises from the process is privacy. Although it is against the law, the selling of personal information over the Internet has occurred. Companies have to obtain certain personal information to be able to properly conduct their business. The problem is that the security systems in place are not adequately protecting this information.

From a customer viewpoint, data mining benefits businesses more than their interests. Their personal information is out there, possibly unprotected, and there is nothing they can do until a negative issue arises. On the other hand, from the business side, it helps enhance overall operations and aid in better customer satisfaction. In regards to the government, they use personal data to tighten security systems and protect the public from terrorism; however, they want to protect people's privacy rights as well. With numerous servers, databases, and websites out there, it becomes increasingly difficult to enforce stricter laws. The more information we introduce to the web, the greater the chances of someone hacking into this data.

Better security systems should be developed before data mining can truly benefit all parties involved. Privacy invasion can ruin people's lives. It can take months, even years, to regain a level of trust that our personal information will be protected. Benefits aside, the safety and well being of any human being should be top priority.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Facts-on-Data-Mining&id=3640795

Data Mining - Critical for Businesses to Tap the Unexplored Market

Knowledge discovery in databases (KDD) is an emerging field and is increasingly gaining importance in today's business. The knowledge discovery process, however, is vast, involving understanding of the business and its requirements, data selection, processing, mining and evaluation or interpretation; it does not have any pre-defined set of rules to go about solving a problem. Among the other stages, the data mining process holds high importance as the task involves identification of new patterns that have not been detected earlier from the dataset. This is relatively a broad concept involving web mining, text mining, online mining etc.

What Data Mining is and what it is not?

The data mining is the process of extracting information, which has been collected, analyzed and prepared, from the dataset and identifying new patterns from that information. At this juncture, it is also important to understand what it is not. The concept is often misunderstood for knowledge gathering, processing, analysis and interpretation/ inference derivation. While these processes are absolutely not data mining, they are very much necessary for its successful implementation.

The 'First-mover Advantage'

One of the major goals of the data mining process is to identify an unknown or rather unexplored segment that had always existed in the business or industry, but was overlooked. The process, when done meticulously using appropriate techniques, could even make way for niche segments providing companies the first-mover advantage. In any industry, the first-mover would bag the maximum benefits and exploit resources besides setting standards for other players to follow. The whole process is thus considered to be a worthy approach to identify unknown segments.

The online knowledge collection and research is the concept involving many complications and, therefore, outsourcing the data mining services often proves viable for large companies that cannot devote time for the task. Outsourcing the web mining services or text mining services would save an organization's productive time which would otherwise be spent in researching.

The data mining algorithms and challenges

Every data mining task follows certain algorithms using statistical methods, cluster analysis or decision tree techniques. However, there is no single universally accepted technique that can be adopted for all. Rather, the process completely depends on the nature of the business, industry and its requirements. Thus, appropriate methods have to be chosen depending upon the business operations.

The whole process is a subset of knowledge discovery process and as such involves different challenges. Analysis and preparation of dataset is very crucial as the well-researched material could assist in extracting only the relevant yet unidentified information useful for the business. Hence, the analysis of the gathered material and preparation of dataset, which also considers industrial standards during the process, would consume more time and labor. Investment is another major challenge in the process as it involves huge cost on deploying professionals with adequate domain knowledge plus knowledge on statistical and technological aspects.

The importance of maintaining a comprehensive database prompted the need for data mining which, in turn, paved way for niche concepts. Though the concept has been present for years now, companies faced with ever growing competition have realized its importance only in the recent years. Besides being relevant, the dataset from where the information is actually extracted also has to be sufficient enough so as to pull out and identify a new dimension. Yet, a standardized approach would result in better understanding and implementation of the newly identified patterns.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining---Critical-for-Businesses-to-Tap-the-Unexplored-Market&id=6745886

Importance of Data Mining Services in Business

Data mining is used in re-establishment of hidden information of the data of the algorithms. It helps to extract the useful information starting from the data, which can be useful to make practical interpretations for the decision making.
It can be technically defined as automated extraction of hidden information of great databases for the predictive analysis. In other words, it is the retrieval of useful information from large masses of data, which is also presented in an analyzed form for specific decision-making. Although data mining is a relatively new term, the technology is not. It is thus also known as Knowledge discovery in databases since it grip searching for implied information in large databases.
It is primarily used today by companies with a strong customer focus - retail, financial, communication and marketing organizations. It is having lot of importance because of its huge applicability. It is being used increasingly in business applications for understanding and then predicting valuable data, like consumer buying actions and buying tendency, profiles of customers, industry analysis, etc. It is used in several applications like market research, consumer behavior, direct marketing, bioinformatics, genetics, text analysis, e-commerce, customer relationship management and financial services.

However, the use of some advanced technologies makes it a decision making tool as well. It is used in market research, industry research and for competitor analysis. It has applications in major industries like direct marketing, e-commerce, customer relationship management, scientific tests, genetics, financial services and utilities.

Data mining consists of major elements:

    Extract and load operation data onto the data store system.
    Store and manage the data in a multidimensional database system.
    Provide data access to business analysts and information technology professionals.
    Analyze the data by application software.
    Present the data in a useful format, such as a graph or table.

The use of data mining in business makes the data more related in application. There are several kinds of data mining: text mining, web mining, relational databases, graphic data mining, audio mining and video mining, which are all used in business intelligence applications. Data mining software is used to analyze consumer data and trends in banking as well as many other industries.

Outsourcing Web Research offer complete Data Mining Services and Solutions to quickly collective data and information from multiple Internet sources for your Business needs in a cost efficient manner. For more info please visit us at: http://www.outsourcingwebresearch.com/ or directly send your requirements at: info@outsourcingwebresearch.com





Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Importance-of-Data-Mining-Services-in-Business&id=2601221

Benefits of Predictive Analytics and Data Mining Services

Predictive Analytics is the process of dealing with variety of data and apply various mathematical formulas to discover the best decision for a given situation. Predictive analytics gives your company a competitive edge and can be used to improve ROI substantially. It is the decision science that removes guesswork out of the decision-making process and applies proven scientific guidelines to find right solution in the shortest time possible.

Predictive analytics can be helpful in answering questions like:

    Who are most likely to respond to your offer?
    Who are most likely to ignore?
    Who are most likely to discontinue your service?
    How much a consumer will spend on your product?
    Which transaction is a fraud?
    Which insurance claim is a fraudulent?
    What resource should I dedicate at a given time?

Benefits of Data mining include:

    Better understanding of customer behavior propels better decision
    Profitable customers can be spotted fast and served accordingly
    Generate more business by reaching hidden markets
    Target your Marketing message more effectively
    Helps in minimizing risk and improves ROI.
    Improve profitability by detecting abnormal patterns in sales, claims, transactions etc
    Improved customer service and confidence
    Significant reduction in Direct Marketing expenses

Basic steps of Predictive Analytics are as follows:

    Spot the business problem or goal
    Explore various data sources such as transaction history, user demography, catalog details, etc)
    Extract different data patterns from the above data
    Build a sample model based on data & problem
    Classify data, find valuable factors, generate new variables
    Construct a Predictive model using sample
    Validate and Deploy this Model

Standard techniques used for it are:

    Decision Tree
    Multi-purpose Scaling
    Linear Regressions
    Logistic Regressions
    Factor Analytics
    Genetic Algorithms
    Cluster Analytics
    Product Association

Should you have any queries regarding Data Mining or Predictive Analytics applications, please feel free to contact us. We would be pleased to answer each of your queries in detail. Email us at info@outsourcingwebresearch.com





Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Benefits-of-Predictive-Analytics-and-Data-Mining-Services&id=4766989

Things You Should Know about Data Mining or Data Capturing

The World Wide Web is a portal containing billions of quality information, spanning resources from around the globe. Through the years, the internet has developed into a competitive business environment which offers advertising, promotions, sales and marketing innovations that has rapidly created a following with most websites, and gave birth to online business transactions and unprecedented financial growth.

Data mining comes into the picture in quite an obscure procedure. Most companies utilize data entry level workers to edit or create listings for the items they promote or sell online. Data mining is that early stage prior to the data entry work which utilizes available resources online to gather bits and pieces of information relevant to the business or website they are categorizing.

In a certain point of view, data mining holds a great deal of importance, as the primary keeper of the quality of the items being listed by the data entry personnel as filtered through the stages under data mining and data capturing.

As mentioned earlier, data mining is a very obscure procedure. The reason for my saying this is because of the fact that certain restrictions or policies are enforced by websites or business institutions particularly on the quality of data capturing, which may seem too time-consuming, meticulous and stringent.

These methodologies are but without explanation as well. As only the most qualified resources bearing the most relevant information can be posted online. Many data mining personnel can only produce satisfactory work on the data entry levels, after enhancing the quality of output from the data mining or data capturing stage.

Data mining includes two common strategies. The first one would be a strategy based on manual labor and data checking, with the use of online or local manual tools and scripts to gather the right information. The second would be through the use of web crawlers or robots to perform the task of checking for information on various websites automatically. The second stage offers a faster method for gathering and listing information.

But often-times the procedure spit out very garbled data, often confusing personnel more than helping.

Data mining is a highly exhaustive activity, often expending more effort, time and money than other types of work. Leveling them out, local data mining is a sure fire method to gain rapid listings of information, as collected by the information miners.

Steve Arun is an Internet Marketing, Client Account Specialist for KPOWEB, an Offshore Outsourcing Consulting company provides virtual dedicated staffing to small business. Go now to KPOWEB Offshore Outsourcing Services, the IT outsourcing people, to access their affordable “Virtual IT Staffing Solution” to find efficient dedicated team that fit your business needs.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Things-You-Should-Know-about-Data-Mining-or-Data-Capturing&id=256125

Data Discovery vs. Data Extraction

Looking at screen-scraping at a simplified level, there are two primary stages involved: data discovery and data extraction. Data discovery deals with navigating a web site to arrive at the pages containing the data you want, and data extraction deals with actually pulling that data off of those pages. Generally when people think of screen-scraping they focus on the data extraction portion of the process, but my experience has been that data discovery is often the more difficult of the two.

The data discovery step in screen-scraping might be as simple as requesting a single URL. For example, you might just need to go to the home page of a site and extract out the latest news headlines. On the other side of the spectrum, data discovery may involve logging in to a web site, traversing a series of pages in order to get needed cookies, submitting a POST request on a search form, traversing through search results pages, and finally following all of the "details" links within the search results pages to get to the data you're actually after. In cases of the former a simple Perl script would often work just fine. For anything much more complex than that, though, a commercial screen-scraping tool can be an incredible time-saver. Especially for sites that require logging in, writing code to handle screen-scraping can be a nightmare when it comes to dealing with cookies and such.

In the data extraction phase you've already arrived at the page containing the data you're interested in, and you now need to pull it out of the HTML. Traditionally this has typically involved creating a series of regular expressions that match the pieces of the page you want (e.g., URL's and link titles). Regular expressions can be a bit complex to deal with, so most screen-scraping applications will hide these details from you, even though they may use regular expressions behind the scenes.

As an addendum, I should probably mention a third phase that is often ignored, and that is, what do you do with the data once you've extracted it? Common examples include writing the data to a CSV or XML file, or saving it to a database. In the case of a live web site you might even scrape the information and display it in the user's web browser in real-time. When shopping around for a screen-scraping tool you should make sure that it gives you the flexibility you need to work with the data once it's been extracted.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Discovery-vs.-Data-Extraction&id=165396

How Can We Ensure the Accuracy of Data Mining - While Anonymizing the Data?

Okay so, the topic of this question is meaningful and was recently asked in a government publication on Internet Privacy, Smart Phone Personal Data, and Social Online Network Security Features. And indeed, it is a good question, in that we need the bulk raw data for many things such as; planning for IT backbone infrastructure, allotting communication frequencies, tracking flu pandemics, chasing cancer clusters, and for national security, etc, on-and-on, this data is very important.

Still, the question remains; "How Can We Ensure the Accuracy of Data Mining - While Anonymizing the Data?" Well, if you don't collect any data in the first place, you know what you've collected is accurate right? No data collected = No errors! But, that's not exactly what everyone has in mind of course. Now then if you don't have sources for the data points, and if all the data is a anonymized in advance, due to the use of screen names in social networks, then none of the accuracy of any of the data can be taken as truthful.

Okay, but that doesn't mean some of the data isn't correct right? And if you know the percentage of data you cannot trust, you can get better results. How about an example, during the campaign of Barak Obama there were numerous polls in the media, of course, many of the online polls showed a larger percentage, land-slide-like, which never materialized in the actual election; why? Simple, there were folks gaming the system, and because the online crowd, younger group participating was in greater abundance.

Back to the topic; perhaps what's needed is for someone less qualified as a trusted source with their information could be sidelined and identified as a question mark and within or adding to the margin of error. And, if it appears to be fake, a number next to that piece of data, and that identification can then be deleted, when doing the data mining.

Although, perhaps a subsystem could allow for tracing and tracking, but only if it was at the national security level, which could take the information all the way down to the individual ISP and actual user identification. And if data was found to be false, it could merely be red flagged, as unreliable.

The reality is you can't trust sources online, or any of the information that you see online, just like you cannot trust word-for-word the information in the newspapers, or the fact that 95% of all intelligence gathered is junk, the trick is to sift through and find the 5% that is reality based, and realize that even the misinformation, often has clues.

Thus, if the questionable data is flagged prior to anonymizing the data, then you can increase your margin for error without ever having the actual identification of any one-piece of data in the whole bulk of the database or data mine. Margins for error are often cut short, to purport better accuracy, usually to the detriment of the information or the conclusions, solutions, or decisions made from that data.

And then there is the fudge factor, when you are collecting data to prove yourself right? Okay, let's talk about that shall we? You really can't trust data as unbiased if the dissemination, collection, processing, and accounting was done by a human being. Likewise, we also know we cannot trust government data, or projections.

Consider if you will the problems with trusting the OMB numbers and economic data on the financial bill, or the cost of the ObamaCare healthcare bill. Also other economic data has been known to be false, and even the bank stress tests in China, the EU, and the United States is questionable. For instance consumer and investor confidence is very important therefore false data is often put out, or real data is manipulated before it's put on the public. Hey, I am not an anti-government guy, and I realize we need the bureaucracy for some things, but I am wise enough to realize that humans run the government, and there is a lot of power involved, humans like to retain and get more of that power. We can expect that.

And we can expect that folks purporting information under fake screen names, pen names to also be less-than-trustworthy, that's all I am saying here. Look, it's not just the government, corporations do it too as they attempt to put a good spin on their quarterly earnings, balance sheet, move assets around, or give forward looking projections.

Even when we look at the data from the FED's Beige Sheet we could say that most all of that is hearsay, because generally the FED Governors of the various districts do not indicate exactly which of their clients, customers, or friends in industry gave them which pieces of information. Thus we don't know what we can trust, and we thus must assume we can't trust any of it, unless we can identify the source prior to its inclusion in the research, report, or mined data query.

This is nothing new, it's the same for all information, whether we read it in the newspaper or our intelligence industry learns of new details. Check sources and if we don't check the sources in advance, the correct thing to do is to increase the probability that the information is indeed incorrect, and/or the margin for error at some point ends up going hyperbolic on you, thus, you need to throw the whole thing out, but then I ask why collect it in the first place.

Ah hell, this is all just philosophy on the accuracy of data mining. Grab yourself a cup of coffee, think about it and email your comments and questions.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Can-We-Ensure-the-Accuracy-of-Data-Mining---While-Anonymizing-the-Data?&id=4868548

How Web Data Extraction Services Will Save Your Time and Money by Automatic Data Collection

Data scrape is the process of extracting data from web by using software program from proven website only. Extracted data any one can use for any purposes as per the desires in various industries as the web having every important data of the world. We provide best of the web data extracting software. We have the expertise and one of kind knowledge in web data extraction, image scrapping, screen scrapping, email extract services, data mining, web grabbing.

Who can use Data Scraping Services?

Data scraping and extraction services can be used by any organization, company, or any firm who would like to have a data from particular industry, data of targeted customer, particular company, or anything which is available on net like data of email id, website name, search term or anything which is available on web. Most of time a marketing company like to use data scraping and data extraction services to do marketing for a particular product in certain industry and to reach the targeted customer for example if X company like to contact a restaurant of California city, so our software can extract the data of restaurant of California city and a marketing company can use this data to market their restaurant kind of product. MLM and Network marketing company also use data extraction and data scrapping services to to find a new customer by extracting data of certain prospective customer and can contact customer by telephone, sending a postcard, email marketing, and this way they build their huge network and build large group for their own product and company.

We helped many companies to find particular data as per their need for example.

Web Data Extraction

Web pages are built using text-based mark-up languages (HTML and XHTML), and frequently contain a wealth of useful data in text form. However, most web pages are designed for human end-users and not for ease of automated use. Because of this, tool kits that scrape web content were created. A web scraper is an API to extract data from a web site. We help you to create a kind of API which helps you to scrape data as per your need. We provide quality and affordable web Data Extraction application

Data Collection

Normally, data transfer between programs is accomplished using info structures suited for automated processing by computers, not people. Such interchange formats and protocols are typically rigidly structured, well-documented, easily parsed, and keep ambiguity to a minimum. Very often, these transmissions are not human-readable at all. That's why the key element that distinguishes data scraping from regular parsing is that the output being scraped was intended for display to an end-user.

Email Extractor

A tool which helps you to extract the email ids from any reliable sources automatically that is called a email extractor. It basically services the function of collecting business contacts from various web pages, HTML files, text files or any other format without duplicates email ids.

Screen scrapping

Screen scraping referred to the practice of reading text information from a computer display terminal's screen and collecting visual data from a source, instead of parsing data as in web scraping.

Data Mining Services

Data Mining Services is the process of extracting patterns from information. Datamining is becoming an increasingly important tool to transform the data into information. Any format including MS excels, CSV, HTML and many such formats according to your requirements.

Web spider

A Web spider is a computer program that browses the World Wide Web in a methodical, automated manner or in an orderly fashion. Many sites, in particular search engines, use spidering as a means of providing up-to-date data.

Web Grabber

Web grabber is just a other name of the data scraping or data extraction.

Web Bot

Web Bot is software program that is claimed to be able to predict future events by tracking keywords entered on the Internet. Web bot software is the best program to pull out articles, blog, relevant website content and many such website related data We have worked with many clients for data extracting, data scrapping and data mining they are really happy with our services we provide very quality services and make your work data work very easy and automatic.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?How-Web-Data-Extraction-Services-Will-Save-Your-Time-and-Money-by-Automatic-Data-Collection&id=5159023

Data Mining - You Have to Be Smarter Than the Data and That's the Rub!

The Department of Homeland Security is using all kinds of computer tools to do data mining and they are gathering the data from businesses and government records, where ever they can find them. Many decry these methods but all the information that the government has on each individual citizen is information that they do indeed own. When you do business with a certain company chances are of the information you give them is theirs to give out to whoever they choose, based on their privacy policy, which you submit to.

Some people believe that Department of Homeland Security has stopped collecting data and that is not true. Yes, some personal identity information, they are not allowed to seek without a court order, but for the most part the government has the opportunity to data mine all sorts of information that is already out there in the public record, the government record or with businesses that the government does contract with.

Additionally, all the is data mining done by Department of Homeland Security, has to do with trends and commonalities. By revealing this information, they can find anomalies in the data that alert them that something is going different or unexpected. This helps them predict patterns of behavior and know when something is out of place. The Department of Homeland Security is allowed to go through chat rooms, online blogs, the Internet, personal home pages, video surveillance footage and they also scan every phone call for data.

Why are they doing this? They are doing this to find data that jumps out at them and signals that something is going wrong. With the help of mathematicians, linguists, artificial intelligence and logicians is amazing what they can come up with. Is the government reading your blog? Yes, they are reading your blog, but is not as if they are snooping, they use search engine type spiders to go through all the pages on the Internet.

What else is the software good for or how can these strategies be used better? By knowing what types of people live in a certain area, or what type of events are occurring along with the amount of chatter going on in a specific area, or with a specific group of people that are linked in some way - the Department of Homeland security can predict an international terrorist attack or a "black swan event" such as someone going berserk at a post office.

Will they actually be able to prevent and predict events in this way? Theoretically, it is possible and such technologies are getting us to a closer place where we will soon know just how good we are predicting the future. Something to definitely contemplate in 2008.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining---You-Have-to-Be-Smarter-Than-the-Data-and-Thats-the-Rub!&id=884014

New Method of Market Segmentation - Combining Segmentation With Data Mining

Marketers have the ability to get high-fidelity information on their target markets through market segmentation. Market segmentation is the process of categorizing potential customers based on certain variables, such as age, gender, and income. A market segment is a group of customers that will react in the same way to a particular marketing campaign. By gathering this information, marketers can tailor their campaigns to groups of prospects to build stronger relationships with them.

Marketers gather this demographic information through surveys, usually when the customer submits a product rebate or willingly participates in a customer satisfaction survey. Over the majority of the past few decades, market segmentation consisted of differentiating prospects based on very simple variables: income, race, location, etc. While this is definitely important information to have on your target market, modern market segmentation takes into account more integrated information.

Modern segmentation breaks the market into target clusters that take into account not only standard demographics, but also other factors such as population density, psychographics, and buying and spending habits of customers. By focusing on these variables in addition to standard demographics, you can gain deeper insight into customer behavior.

Using standard demographics, you can tailor your marketing pieces to specific groups of people. But, by including these more sophisticated variables in your segmentation process, you can determine achieve a higher degree of "lift" or return on your segmentation efforts.

Segmenting your market on these factors helps you realize your total opportunity and revenue potential. It can enable you to better compete with similar product or service providers and lets you know where you stand within the game. It can help you target untapped market opportunities and allow you to better reach and retain customers.

Market segmentation depends on the gathering of high-quality, usable data. Many companies exist to gather and sell massive databases of targeted customer information, as well as providing consultation services to help you make sense of data bought or already owned. The key to the process is determining the best way to split up data.

There are essentially two methods for categorizing customers. Segments can either be determined in advance and then customers are assigned to each segment, or the actual customer data can be analyzed to identify naturally occurring behavioral clusters. Each cluster forms a particular market segment.

The benefit of cluster-based segmentation is that as a market's behavior changes, you can adapt your campaigns to better suit the cluster. The latest techniques blend cluster-based segmentation with deeper customer information acquired via data mining. Data mining uses algorithms to interrogate data within a database, and can produce information such as buying frequency and product types.

This new method of market segmentation, combining segmentation with data mining, provides marketers with high quality information on how their customers shop for and purchase their products or services. By combining standard market segmentation with data mining techniques you can better predict and model the behavior of your segments.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?New-Method-of-Market-Segmentation---Combining-Segmentation-With-Data-Mining&id=6890243