Web scraping Services | Email Scraping Services | Data mining Services

Web scraping Services | Email Scraping Services | Data mining Services

Web scraping (web harvesting or web data extraction) is a computer software technique of extracting information from websites. Usually, such software programs simulate human exploration of the World Wide Web by either implementing low-level Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), or embedding a fully-fledged web browser, such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox.

Web scraping is closely related to web indexing, which indexes information on the web using a bot or web crawler and is a universal technique adopted by most search engines. In contrast, web scraping focuses more on the transformation of unstructured data on the web, typically in HTML format, into structured data that can be stored and analyzed in a central local database or spreadsheet. Web scraping is also related to web automation, which simulates human browsing using computer software. Uses of web scraping include online price comparison, contact scraping, weather data monitoring, website change detection, research, web mashup and web data integration.

Techniques

Web scraping is the process of automatically collecting information from the World Wide Web. It is a field with active developments sharing a common goal with the semantic web vision, an ambitious initiative that still requires breakthroughs in text processing, semantic understanding, artificial intelligence and human-computer interactions. Current web scraping solutions range from the ad-hoc, requiring human effort, to fully automated systems that are able to convert entire web sites into structured information, with limitations.

1.
Human copy-and-paste: Sometimes even the best web-scraping technology cannot replace a human’s manual examination and copy-and-paste, and sometimes this may be the only workable solution when the websites for scraping explicitly set up barriers to prevent machine automation.

2.
Text grepping and regular expression matching: A simple yet powerful approach to extract information from web pages can be based on the UNIX grep command or regular expression-matching facilities of programming languages (for instance Perl or Python).

3.
HTTP programming: Static and dynamic web pages can be retrieved by posting HTTP requests to the remote web server using socket programming.

4.
HTML parsers: Many websites have large collections of pages generated dynamically from an underlying structured source like a database. Data of the same category are typically encoded into similar pages by a common script or template. In data mining, a program that detects such templates in a particular information source, extracts its content and translates it into a relational form, is called a wrapper. Wrapper generation algorithms assume that input pages of a wrapper induction system conform to a common template and that they can be easily identified in terms of a URL common scheme. Moreover, some semi-structured data query languages, such as XQuery and the HTQL, can be used to parse HTML pages and to retrieve and transform page content.

5.
DOM parsing: By embedding a full-fledged web browser, such as the Internet Explorer or the Mozilla browser control, programs can retrieve the dynamic content generated by client-side scripts. These browser controls also parse web pages into a DOM tree, based on which programs can retrieve parts of the pages.

6.
Web-scraping software: There are many software tools available that can be used to customize web-scraping solutions. This software may attempt to automatically recognize the data structure of a page or provide a recording interface that removes the necessity to manually write web-scraping code, or some scripting functions that can be used to extract and transform content, and database interfaces that can store the scraped data in local databases.

7.
Vertical aggregation platforms: There are several companies that have developed vertical specific harvesting platforms. These platforms create and monitor a multitude of “bots” for specific verticals with no "man in the loop" (no direct human involvement), and no work related to a specific target site. The preparation involves establishing the knowledge base for the entire vertical and then the platform creates the bots automatically. The platform's robustness is measured by the quality of the information it retrieves (usually number of fields) and its scalability (how quick it can scale up to hundreds or thousands of sites). This scalability is mostly used to target the Long Tail of sites that common aggregators find complicated or too labor-intensive to harvest content from.

8.
Semantic annotation recognizing: The pages being scraped may embrace metadata or semantic markups and annotations, which can be used to locate specific data snippets. If the annotations are embedded in the pages, as Microformat does, this technique can be viewed as a special case of DOM parsing. In another case, the annotations, organized into a semantic layer, are stored and managed separately from the web pages, so the scrapers can retrieve data schema and instructions from this layer before scraping the pages.

9.
Computer vision web-page analyzers: There are efforts using machine learning and computer vision that attempt to identify and extract information from web pages by interpreting pages visually as a human being might

Source:http://research.omicsgroup.org/index.php/Data_scraping

Three Common Methods For Web Data Extraction

Three Common Methods For Web Data Extraction

Probably the most common technique used traditionally to extract data from web pages this is to cook up some regular expressions that match the pieces you want (e.g., URL's and link titles). Our screen-scraper software actually started out as an application written in Perl for this very reason. In addition to regular expressions, you might also use some code written in something like Java or Active Server Pages to parse out larger chunks of text. Using raw regular expressions to pull out the data can be a little intimidating to the uninitiated, and can get a bit messy when a script contains a lot of them. At the same time, if you're already familiar with regular expressions, and your scraping project is relatively small, they can be a great solution.

Other techniques for getting the data out can get very sophisticated as algorithms that make use of artificial intelligence and such are applied to the page. Some programs will actually analyze the semantic content of an HTML page, then intelligently pull out the pieces that are of interest. Still other approaches deal with developing "ontologies", or hierarchical vocabularies intended to represent the content domain.

There are a number of companies (including our own) that offer commercial applications specifically intended to do screen-scraping. The applications vary quite a bit, but for medium to large-sized projects they're often a good solution. Each one will have its own learning curve, so you should plan on taking time to learn the ins and outs of a new application. Especially if you plan on doing a fair amount of screen-scraping it's probably a good idea to at least shop around for a screen-scraping application, as it will likely save you time and money in the long run.

So what's the best approach to data extraction? It really depends on what your needs are, and what resources you have at your disposal. Here are some of the pros and cons of the various approaches, as well as suggestions on when you might use each one:

Raw regular expressions and code

Advantages:

- If you're already familiar with regular expressions and at least one programming language, this can be a quick solution.
- Regular expressions allow for a fair amount of "fuzziness" in the matching such that minor changes to the content won't break them.
- You likely don't need to learn any new languages or tools (again, assuming you're already familiar with regular expressions and a programming language).
- Regular expressions are supported in almost all modern programming languages. Heck, even VBScript has a regular expression engine. It's also nice because the various regular expression implementations don't vary too significantly in their syntax.

Ontologies and artificial intelligence

Advantages:

- You create it once and it can more or less extract the data from any page within the content domain you're targeting.
- The data model is generally built in. For example, if you're extracting data about cars from web sites the extraction engine already knows what the make, model, and price are, so it can easily map them to existing data structures (e.g., insert the data into the correct locations in your database).
- There is relatively little long-term maintenance required. As web sites change you likely will need to do very little to your extraction engine in order to account for the changes.

Screen-scraping software

Advantages:

- Abstracts most of the complicated stuff away. You can do some pretty sophisticated things in most screen-scraping applications without knowing anything about regular expressions, HTTP, or cookies.
- Dramatically reduces the amount of time required to set up a site to be scraped. Once you learn a particular screen-scraping application the amount of time it requires to scrape sites vs. other methods is significantly lowered.
- Support from a commercial company. If you run into trouble while using a commercial screen-scraping application, chances are there are support forums and help lines where you can get assistance.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Three-Common-Methods-For-Web-Data-Extraction&id=165416

How Data Entry is referenced in Popular Culture, Both Past and Present

Pop culture embraces all things relevant in media, particularly in movies, music, television, sports, news, fashion, and technology. It’s a focal point in Western culture, and serves to provide a point of reference for the majority of communication between people in today’s society. It also creates a common framework for interaction and helps to instill an overall sense of fellowship and commonality for people all over the world. Throughout this thread of pop culture over the past sixty years, there has been a recurrent underlying link in the form of data entry and all its various embodiments.

At first glance, data entry would seem to be an oddity in the course of pop culture references, yet it is undeniably present in numerous familiar contexts. Ever since society at large designated a recognizable concept of “pop culture” in the late 1950’s (arriving hand and hand with the influx of rock and roll in the United States and the U.K.), data in popular culture has been a staple in nearly every conceivable corner of media, and carries an even stronger presence today with the global architecture of the internet and interactive mobile devices.Data takes on a new, compelling shape when scrutinized under the following interesting, unique, and very specific pop culture references.

Popular Culture: The PresentData Collection, Research, and Analysis in Sports:

There are literally dozens of different sports that carry a ravenous fandom on their metaphorical shoulders. This multi-billion dollar industry extends to every possible section of media, consumer products, and events, whether it’s protein bars and sports drinks contracts with football players on the label, or multi-million dollar baseball stadiums in major cities, or even fantasy sports leagues in everyday homes. Data collection, research, and analysis is a fundamental backbone to every single aspect of the professional sports industry, a scientific process overseen by professional specialists and an analytics department.These data based methods aid professional sports teams in studying an athlete’s abilities and probabilities when contracting them and determining their value for joining certain teams, among other things.

Further examples of data research, collection and analysis in a professional sports context include:

- Determining baseball player batting averages or a footballer’s yards per carry
- Calculating an athlete’s winning percentages
- Tracking ballpark revenue
- Pricing and counting ticket sales for seats
- Tracking budgets for stadium maintenance
- Budgeting for the season
- Trading and signing players
- Data Mining, Collection, and Analysis in Comic Con:

While once symbolizing a small representation of “geek” culture, Comic Con is now a billion dollar global industry that brings in millions in revenue for the event’s host cities. With Con events taking place in New York, London, Los Angeles, Seattle, Sydney, and San Diego (to name just a few), Comic Con now embraces a wealth of popular culture, including blockbuster movies, televisions series, celebrity events, book signings, video games, and toys, and boasts attendance counts of close to 200,000 people per day. Companies like Xbox, Paramount Studios, Marvel, DC Comics, Universal Studios, and Blizzard rake in millions of dollars in product sales and guest fees, continuing to spurn the legitimacy of Comic Con as a lucrative entertainment event.
Data entry is integral to the management and organization of Comic Con, and requires teams of accountants, researchers, and analysts utilizing complex data mining, collection, processing, and analysis techniques.

These techniques are applied towards a multitude of areas, and some specific examples include:

- Determining popular events per location
- Studying social media for trending actors, shows, and movies
- Booking guests according to popular demand on social media
- Tracking attendance and ticket sales
- Contracting with local hotels and convention centers
- Obtaining feedback from participants
- Budgeting and paying for guests (like Playstation or HBO)
- Tracking and processing payments for product sales
- Popular Culture: The Past Data Collection and Research in Advertising

Advertising is currently one of the driving forces behind every brand, company, and product, and encompasses each segment of our daily interactions with all types of media. Yet the indispensability and impact of advertising on general public opinion and purchasing habits only became a part of popular culture in the early 1960’s, with brands like Marlboro, Ford, and Campbell’s Soup becoming household names due to clever advertising. The early 1960’s was the start of advertising on a mass media scale, and was used to heavily influence consumer spending. As advertising feasibility and significance grew, companies like Apple used clever advertising in the late 1980’s to bring awareness to their brand and build a following.

As advertising in the mid-20th century relied on data collection and research to reach their goals, the available methods were largely comprised of manual, laborious public opinion surveys, and product sales calculation.

Data collection and research methods were utilized towards the following examples:

- Calculating commercial ratings per advertisement
- Determining public favorability towards brands
- Budgeting for billboard and magazine ads
- Calculating product sales
- Data Entry in Science Fiction and Fantasy Culture

With the world on the cusp of frequent war from the 1910’s through the 1980’s, people yearned for an escape from the often depressing reality WWI, WWII, The Korean War, Vietnam, and the Cold War brought. The rise of Science Fiction and Fantasy genres in popular culture was widespread throughout books, movies, art, and television. Ray Bradbury, Tolkien, Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Star Wars, and Alien encompassed all possible corners of media with rich sci-fi and fantasy art forms, and were incredibly popular throughout the early to late 20th century.Some based in the realities of scientific data collection, research, processing, or analysis, others offered glimpses of dazzling data entry usage in the forms of imaginative futuristic technology.

Data entry, in every conceivable shape, was referenced in this scope of Sci-Fi and Fantasy media in the following specific ways:

- Space navigation, travel, linguistic interpretation, and computing in the 1960’s Star Trek T.V. show.
- Of the 982 characters in Tolkien’s The Hobbit and Lord of Rings books (c. 1937), there are extensive databases that classify    statistics like race, gender, life expectancies, age, and relationships for each.
- The Star Wars movies (introduced in 1977) featured the Jedi Archives, a fictional collecting database which contained all the    in formation of the known galaxies.
- Bradbury’s War of the Worlds book (1898) inspired scientist Robert Goddard to invent special rockets for NASA space travel   through scientific based data collection and research.
- The hit 1979 movie Alien featured the ship “Nostromo,” which provided an advanced computer for the crew to access   information and data about destinations, crew members, company information, star systems, and history.

Source : https://www.dataentryoutsourced.com/blog/data-entry-referenced-in-popular-culture/

Scrape Data from Website is a Proven Way to Boost Business Profits

Data scraping is not a new technology in market. Several business persons use this method to get benefited from it and to make good fortune. It is the procedure of gathering worthwhile data that has been located in the public domain of the internet and keeping it in records or databases for future usage in innumerable applications.

There is a large amount of data available only through websites. However, as many people have found out, trying to copy data into a usable database or spreadsheet directly out of a website can be a tiring process. Manual copying and pasting of data from web pages is shear wastage of time and effort. To make this task easier there are a number of companies that offer commercial applications specifically intended to scrape data from website. They are proficient of navigating the web, evaluating the contents of a site, and then dragging data points and placing them into an organized, operational databank or worksheet.

Web scraping company

Every day, there are numerous websites that are hosting in internet. It is almost impossible to see all the websites in a single day. With this scraping tool, companies are able to view all the web pages in internet. If a business is using an extensive collection of applications, these scraping tools prove to be very useful.

It is most often done either to interface to a legacy system which has no other mechanism which is compatible with current hardware, or to interface to a third-party system which does not provide a more convenient API. In the second case, the operator of the third-party system will often see screen scraping as unwanted, due to reasons such as increased system load, the loss of advertisement revenue, or the loss of control of the information content.

Scrape data from website greatly helps in determining the modern market trends, customer behavior and the future trends and gathers relevant data that is immensely desirable for the business or personal use.


Source : http://www.botscraper.com/blog/Scrape-Data-from-Website-is-a-Proven-Way-to-Boost-Business-Profits

Data Entry Outsourcing - 6 Key Benefits of Outsourced Data Entry

The effective data typing services are must and have to outsource because of globalization. Without information, no company can go ahead and become successful. At every point of making decisions, proper information is essential. So data is one of the most important parts in any organization. There must be proper management to keep the business running smoothly and effectively.

If you want reliable source for data handling, hire typing service company to outsource data entry task. Currently, solutions for every type of business needs are available at reasonable rate. As business grow, it is very hard to manage huge information. So, companies are turning to data entry outsourcing.

Here are the key benefits of data entry outsourcing:

1. All-in-One: data entry firms are offering numbers of services like, data processing, scanning, information formatting, document conversion, indexing and others. They also understand your requirement and deliver the output required format such as Word, Excel, JPG, HTML, XML and Other.

2. Resolve the Issues: As company grows, there are many issues arise like information about employees, benefits, healthcare for them, tuning with rapidly changing technologies, latest business information and others. If organization outsources some of their responsibilities, various issues get resolved quickly and automatically.

3. Better Services: You can expect superior data management and high quality services from outsourcing companies. They have experienced and skilled professionals with latest technologies to deliver unexpected result and stay ahead of other.

4. Least Cost: You can lower down your capital cost of infrastructure and other cost of salary, stationery and other, if you outsource data typing task. Through offshore companies, you can easily save up to 60% on data typing services.

5. Higher Efficiency: If your employees are free from routine and uninteresting process of entering information, they can deliver better result. Ultimately, this can increase the job satisfaction level and efficiency. You can expect high output at lower costs.

6. Place of Outsourcing: You must think about the outsourcing country. India is chosen by various companies for data typing outsourcing. At India, you can get benefits of better quality, enough infrastructure, quick delivery, skilled experts at very low rates.

You can easily reduce tons of time-consuming and boring responsibilities by outsourcing.



Article Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Entry-Outsourcing---6-Key-Benefits-of-Outsourced-Data-Entry&id=4253927

To Know Difference Of Data Mining And Web Screen Scraping

To Know Difference Of Data Mining And Web Screen Scraping

Screen scraping to find information, where data mining can analyze information possible. This is a great simplification, so I will work a bit.

World Fast Forward, screen scraping websites than ever refers to extract information. Computer programs "crawl" or "spider" through web sites, pulls the data. For many people the comparison shopping engine, archive web pages, or a spreadsheet for a text so that it can be filtered to analyze things like build to download.

Data mining, on the other hand, is defined by Wikipedia as "the practice of automatically search large stores of data for patterns. Other words, you already know, and you know about the useful things about care. Thus we have the right pages of text data mining, automated data collection, web data extraction, and the bloody website is preferred.

If your two-card Treasure popular poker forums and read to your poker "data mining" many of the technical discussion of the saw, and thought how it can help you win more money. In this article I will give you an introduction to poker data mining and clarify some common misconceptions.

Poker data mining is a process where you (I) is a poker hand histories ("Data") collected in the game without taking part yourself. After the collected hand, you Holder Manager, your opponents to play in a program like Advanced Statistics can import. Normally determine the player playing style.

In addition, many people enjoy watching the high stakes games and save your favorite poker professionals with the hand history. For a special "hand grabber" data mine the program. A hand grabber a small program that runs in the background and the “clock” poker table for your computer, and protects them from the hand history, if any are found.

Invisible Shield as hard and strong that even if you have a knife to try and cut on the screen, you will surely fail. For an expensive mobile phone, screen protector because of your unfailing security forces has the best security. Transparent cover can hardly be seen because it is very thin. But this does not mean that it is not difficult if the scratches and resists any form.

In fact, invisible shield, even if you close your eyes, hold the phone, you can hardly see. Degree of protection as their heavy armor, although seem thin and irrelevant. Invisible Shield is just a shell for the phone, the phone is not interrupted. If you have a cable that you connect to the touch screen as before to use.

It is possible for you to buy full body armor kit, which is a security for the phone. Screen coverage is absolutely necessary, and the slope of the touch screen can also be purchased. But for the kit to buy the entire cover of the phone because it marks or scratches from all sides to protect the whole phone is recommended.

Source:http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/to-know-difference-of-data-mining-and-web-screen-scraping