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/

Know What the Truth Behind Data Mining Outsourcing Service

We came to that, what we call the information age where industries are like useful data needed for decision-making, the creation of products - among other essential uses for business. Information mining and converting them to useful information is a part of this trend that allows companies to reach their optimum potential. However, many companies that do not meet even one deal with data mining question because they are simply overwhelmed with other important tasks. This is where data mining outsourcing comes in.

There have been many definitions to introduced, but it can be simply explained as a process that involves sorting through large amounts of raw data to extract valuable information needed by industries and enterprises in various fields. In most cases this is done by professionals, professional organizations and financial analysts. He has seen considerable growth in the number of sectors or groups that enter my self.
There are a number of reasons why there is a rapid growth in data mining outsourcing service subscriptions. Some of them are presented below:

A wide range of services

Many companies are turning to information mining outsourcing, because they cover a wide range of services. These services include, but are not limited to data from web applications congregation database, collect contact information from different sites, extract data from websites using the software, the sort of stories from sources news, information and accumulate commercial competitors.

Many companies fall

Many industries benefit because it is fast and realistic. The information extracted by data mining service providers of outsourcing used in crucial decisions in the field of direct marketing, e-commerce, customer relationship management, health, scientific tests and other experimental work, telecommunications, financial services, and a whole lot more.

A lot of advantages

Subscribe data mining outsourcing services it's offers many benefits, as providers assures customers to render services to world standards. They strive to work with improved technologies, scalability, sophisticated infrastructure, resources, timeliness, cost, the system safer for the security of information and increased market coverage.

Outsourcing allows companies to focus their core business and can improve overall productivity. Not surprisingly, information mining outsourcing has been a first choice of many companies - to propel the business to higher profits.

In this Article Author wants to tell about Data mining services and truth behind Data Mining Outsourcing Service.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Know-What-the-Truth-Behind-Data-Mining-Outsourcing-Service&id=5303589

Data Mining Is Useful for Business Application and Market Research Services

One day of data mining is an important tool in a market for modern business and market research to transform data into an information system advantage. Most companies in India that offers a complete solution and services for these services. The extraction or to provide companies with important information for analysis and research.

These services are primarily today by companies because the firm body search of all trade associations, retail, financial or market, the institute and the government needs a large amount of information for their development of market research. This service allows you to receive all types of information when needed. With this method, you simply remove your name and information filter.

This service is of great importance, because their applications to help businesses understand that it can perform actions and consumer buying trends and industry analysis, etc. There are business applications use these services:
1) Research Services
2) consumption behavior
3) E-commerce
4) Direct marketing
5) financial services and
6) customer relationship management, etc.

Benefits of Data mining services in Business

• Understand the customer need for better decision
• Generate more business
• Target the Relevant Market.
• Risk free outsourcing experience
• Provide data access to business analysts
• Help to minimize risk and improve ROI.
• Improve profitability by detect unusual pattern in sales, claims, transactions
• Major decrease in Direct Marketing expenses

Understanding the customer's need for a better fit to generate more business target market.To provide risk-free outsourcing experience data access for business analysts to minimize risk and improve return on investment.

The use of these services in the area to help ensure that the data more relevant to business applications. The different types of text mining such as mining, web mining, relational databases, data mining, graphics, audio and video industry, which all used in enterprise applications.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Is-Useful-for-Business-Application-and-Market-Research-Services&id=5123878

Preference to Offshore Document Data Entry Services

kind of data at the right time is very crucial and that is why companies opt for reliable services.

These services covers a range of professional business oriented activities such as document plus image processing to image editing as well as catalog processing. A few noteworthy examples of from documents include: PDF document indexing, insurance claim entry, online data capture as well as creating new databases. These services are important in industries like insurance companies, banks, government departments and airlines.

Companies such as Offshore and outsource and others offer an entire gamut of first rate data services. Actually, getting services from documents offshore to developing yet competent countries like India has made the process highly economical plus quality driven too.

Business giants around the world have realized multiple advantages associated in Offshore-Data-Entry. Companies not only prosper because of quality services but are also benefited because of better turn around time, maintaining confidentiality of data as well as economic rates.

Though the company works in all form of documents, there are few below mentioned areas where it specializes:

• Document data entry
• Document data entry conversion
• Document data processing
• Document data capture services
• Web data extraction
• Document scanning indexing

Since reputable companies like Offshore Data-Entry hire only well qualified and trained candidates work satisfaction is guaranteed. There are several steps involved in the quality check (QC) process and therefore accuracy level is maintained to 99.995% ensuring that the end result is delivered to the client far beyond his expectation.

With the amount of talent that India has outsourcing your data from documents is certainly an intelligent step. Visit our site: http://www.offshoredataentry.com, and drop us an email through a contact us feature and we will get back to you for your assistance.





Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Preference-to-Offshore-Document-Data-Entry-Services&id=5570327

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

What You Should Know About Data Mining

Often called data or knowledge discovery, data mining is the process of analyzing data from various perspectives and summarizing it into useful information to help beef up revenue or cut costs. Data mining software is among the many analytical tools used to analyze data. It allows categorizing of data and shows a summary of the relationships identified. From a technical perspective, it is finding patterns or correlations among fields in large relational databases. Find out how data mining works and its innovations, what technological infrastructures are needed, and what tools like phone number validation can do.

Data mining may be a relatively new term, but it uses old technology. For instance, companies have made use of computers to sift through supermarket scanner data - volumes of them - and analyze years' worth of market research. These kinds of analyses help define the frequency of customer shopping, how many items are usually bought, and other information that will help the establishment increase revenue. These days, however, what makes this easy and more cost-effective are disk storage, statistical software, and computer processing power.

Data mining is mainly used by companies who want to maintain a strong customer focus, whether they're engaged in retail, finance, marketing, or communications. It enables companies to determine the different relationships among varying factors, including staffing, pricing, product positioning, market competition, and social demographics.

Data mining software, for example, vary in types: statistical, machine learning, and neural networks. It seeks any of the four types of relationships: classes (stored data is used for locating data in predetermined groups), clusters (data are grouped according to logical relationships or consumer preferences), associations (data is mined to identify associations), and sequential patterns (data is mined to estimate behavioral trends and patterns). There are different levels of analysis, including artificial neural networks, genetic algorithms, decision trees, nearest neighbor method, rule induction, and data visualization.

In today's world, data mining applications are available on all size systems from client/server, mainframe, and PC platforms. When it comes to enterprise-wide applications, the size usually ranges from 10 gigabytes to more than 11 terabytes. The two important technological drivers are the size of the database and query complexity. A more powerful system is required with more data being processed and maintained, and with more complex and greater queries.

Programmable XML web services like phone number validation will assist your company in improving the quality of your data needed for data mining. Used to validate phone numbers, a phone number validation service allows you to improve the quality of your contact database by eliminating invalid telephone numbers at the point of entry. Upon verification, phone number and other customer information can work wonders for your business and its constant improvement.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?What-You-Should-Know-About-Data-Mining&id=6916646

Has It Been Done Before? Optimize Your Patent Search Using Patent Scraping Technology

Has it been done before? Optimize your Patent Search using Patent Scraping Technology.

Since the US patent office opened in 1790, inventors across the United States have been submitting all sorts of great products and half-baked ideas to their database. Nowadays, many individuals get ideas for great products only to have the patent office do a patent search and tell them that their ideas have already been patented by someone else! Herin lies a question: How do I perform a patent search to find out if my invention has already been patented before I invest time and money into developing it?

The US patent office patent search database is available to anyone with internet access.

US Patent Search Homepage

Performing a patent search with the patent searching tools on the US Patent office webpage can prove to be a very time consuming process. For example, patent searching the database for "dog" and "food" yields 5745 patent search results. The straight-forward approach to investigating the patent search results for your particular idea is to go through all 5745 results one at a time looking for yours. Get some munchies and settle in, this could take a while! The patent search database sorts results by patent number instead of relevancy. This means that if your idea was recently patented, you will find it near the top but if it wasn't, you could be searching for quite a while. Also, most patent search results have images associated with them. Downloading and displaying these images over the internet can be very time consuming depending on you internet connection and the availability of the patent search database servers.

Because patent searches take such a long time, many companies and organizations are looking ways to improve the process. Some organizations and companies will hire employees for the sole purpose of performing patent searches for them. Others contract out the job to small business that specialize in patent searches. The latest technology for performing patent searches is called patent scraping.

Patent scraping is the process of writing computer automated scripts that analyze a website and copy only the content you are interested in into easily accessible databases or spreadsheets on your computer. Because it is a computerized script performing the patent search, you don't need a separate employee to get the data, you can let it run the patent scraping while you perform other important tasks! Patent scraping technology can also extract text content from images. By saving the images and textual content to your computer, you can then very efficiently search them for content and relevancy; thus saving you lots of time that could be better spent actually inventing something!

To put a real-world face on this, let us consider the pharmaceutical industry. Many different companies are competing for the patent on the next big drug. It has become an indispensible tactic of the industry for one company to perform patent searches for what patents the other companies are applying for, thus learning in which direction the research and development team of the other company is taking them. Using this information, the company can then choose to either pursue that direction heavily, or spin off in a different direction. It would quickly become very costly to maintain a team of researchers dedicated to only performing patent searches all day. Patent scraping technology is the means for figuring out what ideas and technologies are coming about before they make headline news. It is by utilizing patent scraping technology that the large companies stay up to date on the latest trends in technology.

While some companies choose to hire their own programming team to do their patent scraping scripts for them, it is much more cost effective to contract out the job to a qualified team of programmers dedicated to performing such services.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Has-It-Been-Done-Before?-Optimize-Your-Patent-Search-Using-Patent-Scraping-Technology&id=171000

Cutting Down the Cost of Data Mining

For most industries that maintain databases, from patient history in the healthcare industry to account information for the financial and banking sectors, data entry costs are a significant expense for maintaining good records. After data enters a system, performing operations and data mining extractions on the information is a long process that becomes more time consuming as a database grows.

Data automation is essential for reducing operational expenses on any type of stored data. Having data entrants performing every necessary task becomes cost prohibitive quickly. Utilizing software solutions to automate database operations is the ultimate answer to leveraging information without the associated high cost.

Data Mining Simplified

Data management software will greatly enhance the productivity of any data entrant or end user. In fact, effective programs offer macro recording that can turn any user into a data entry expert. For example, a user can perform an operation on a single piece of data and "record" all the actions, keystrokes, and mouse clicks into a program. Then, the computer software can repeat that task on every database entry automatically and at incredible speeds.

Data mining often requires a decision making process; a recorded macro is only going to perform tasks and not think about what it is doing. Software suites are able to analyze data, decide what action needs to be performed based on user specified criteria, and then iterate that process on an entire database. This function nearly eliminates the need for a human to have to manually look at data to determine its content and the necessary operation.

Case Study: Bank Data Migration

To understand how effective data mining and automation can be, let us take a look at an actual example.

Bank data migration and manipulation is a large undertaking and an integral part of any bank's operations. Account data is constantly being updated and utilized in the decision making process. Even a mid-sized bank can have upwards of a quarter million accounts to maintain. In order to update every account to utilize new waive fee codes, data automation can save approximately 19,000 hours that it would have taken to open every account, decide what codes applies, and update that account's status.

Recurring operations on a database, even if small in scale, that can be automated will reap cost saving benefits over the lifetime of a business. The credit department within a bank would process payment plans for new home, car, and personal loans monthly, saving thousands of operations performed every month. Retirement and 401k accounts that shift investments every year based on expected retirement dates also benefit from automatic account updates, ensuring timely and accurate account changes.

Cost savings for data mining or bank data migration are an excellent profit driver. Cutting down on expenses on a per-client or per-account basis increases margins directly without having to secure more customers, reduce prices, or remove services. Efficient data operations will save time and money, allowing personnel to better direct their energy and efforts towards key business tasks.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Cutting-Down-the-Cost-of-Data-Mining&id=3329403

Data Extraction - A Guideline to Use Scrapping Tools Effectively

So many people around the world do not have much knowledge about these scrapping tools. In their views, mining means extracting resources from the earth. In these internet technology days, the new mined resource is data. There are so many data mining software tools are available in the internet to extract specific data from the web. Every company in the world has been dealing with tons of data, managing and converting this data into a useful form is a real hectic work for them. If this right information is not available at the right time a company will lose valuable time to making strategic decisions on this accurate information.

This type of situation will break opportunities in the present competitive market. However, in these situations, the data extraction and data mining tools will help you to take the strategic decisions in right time to reach your goals in this competitive business. There are so many advantages with these tools that you can store customer information in a sequential manner, you can know the operations of your competitors, and also you can figure out your company performance. And it is a critical job to every company to have this information at fingertips when they need this information.

To survive in this competitive business world, this data extraction and data mining are critical in operations of the company. There is a powerful tool called Website scraper used in online digital mining. With this toll, you can filter the data in internet and retrieves the information for specific needs. This scrapping tool is used in various fields and types are numerous. Research, surveillance, and the harvesting of direct marketing leads is just a few ways the website scraper assists professionals in the workplace.

Screen scrapping tool is another tool which useful to extract the data from the web. This is much helpful when you work on the internet to mine data to your local hard disks. It provides a graphical interface allowing you to designate Universal Resource Locator, data elements to be extracted, and scripting logic to traverse pages and work with mined data. You can use this tool as periodical intervals. By using this tool, you can download the database in internet to you spread sheets. The important one in scrapping tools is Data mining software, it will extract the large amount of information from the web, and it will compare that date into a useful format. This tool is used in various sectors of business, especially, for those who are creating leads, budget establishing seeing the competitors charges and analysis the trends in online. With this tool, the information is gathered and immediately uses for your business needs.

Another best scrapping tool is e mailing scrapping tool, this tool crawls the public email addresses from various web sites. You can easily from a large mailing list with this tool. You can use these mailing lists to promote your product through online and proposals sending an offer for related business and many more to do. With this toll, you can find the targeted customers towards your product or potential business parents. This will allows you to expand your business in the online market.

There are so many well established and esteemed organizations are providing these features free of cost as the trial offer to customers. If you want permanent services, you need to pay nominal fees. You can download these services from their valuable web sites also.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Extraction---A-Guideline-to-Use-Scrapping-Tools-Effectively&id=3600918

Data Mining, Visual Analytics, and The Human Component!

With all the massive amounts of data we are collecting from the Internet, well, it is just amazing the things we can do with it all. Of course, those concerned about privacy, well, you can understand why organizations like the Electronic Freedom Foundation is often fit to be tied. Still, think of all the good that can become of all this data? Let me explain.

You see, with the right use of visual analytics and various data mining strategies, we will be able to do nearly anything we need too. And, yes, I guess it goes without saying that I have a ton of thoughts on Visual Analytics of the Internet, Mobile Ad Hoc networking, and Social Networks along with some concepts for DARPAs plan for "crowd sourcing" innovation, it makes perfect sense to me, as each participant becomes basically a "neuron" and we use the natural neural network scheme.

What we need is a revolution in data mining visual analytics, so the other day I spent 20-minutes considering this and here are my thoughts. I propose an entirely new concept herein. Okay so let me explain my concept. But first let me briefly describe the bits and pieces of ideas and concepts I borrowed from to come up with this;

    There is an only UFO or Sci Fi tale I read, where the alien race said; "There is a whole new world waiting for you if you dare to take it,"
    Taking the "it" part of that line and calling "it" = "IT" as in Information Technologies.
    Next, combining that "IT" or "It entity" with that old Christian apocalyptic "mark of the beast" and the old computer system in Belgium 30-years ago claiming to be big enough to track every world transaction, also nick-named the beast.
    Then combining that concept with V. Bush's concept of "recording a life" or the later "life log theory" from Bell Labs.
    Then using the concept of the eRepublic, where government is nothing more than a networked website.
    Then considering the thought of Bill Gate's concepts in "the Road Ahead" where the digital nervous system of a corporation was completely and fully integrated.
    Combined with SAPs, and Oracles enterprise solutions
    Combined with Google's data bases
    Combined with the Pangaea Project for kids to collaborate in elementary school around the world and programming the AI computer, using a scheme designed by Carnegie Mellon to crowd source the teaching of an AI system. "eLearning Collaborative Networks like Quorum or Pangaea"
    Combined with IBMs newest mind map visualization recently in the news..
    Combined with these following thoughts of mine:

    My Book; "The Future of Truck Technologies," and 3D and 4D Transportation Computer Modeling; Page; 201.
    My Book; "Holographic Technologies," specifically; Data Visualization Schemes; Page 57 Chapter 5.
    My Article on 3D and 4D Mind Maps for Tracking and Analyzing.
    My Article on Mind Maps of the Future and Online style Think Tanks
    My Article on Stair Step Mentorship for Human Learning in the Future and Never Aging Societies.

Okay now let me explain the premise of my concept for Visual Analytics;

First, forget this whole idea of a 2D mind mapping concept or chart used to show links between terrorist players, cells, assets, acquaintances, etc., the way it is laid out currently - make it 3D, actually make it 4D and 5D where some layers can only be seen by a select few, and let's say a 6D level that can only be accessed by an AI super computer [why; because I don't trust humans, they can't be trusted, i.e. WikiLeak, leaker for instance].

Next ALL the data is stored within in the sphere. But to access the data on the outer side of the sphere, picture Earth's surface, the ball or sphere (with grids like a map of the globe) rolls around on a giant grid paper. When you want to look at a particular event, person, subject, or whatever, a particular point on the sphere's grid touches a corresponding point on the grid paper it rolls on, the grid paper it rolls on can wrap around and morph itself to the sphere or contour itself so the next corresponding piece of information on the surface can be accessed, rolling or spinning.

Picture a selectric typewriter ball on a shaft as a 2D model to consider this, now make it all 3D in your mind, and the paper molds around the sphere as it accesses, or in the case of a selectric typewriter it types. Now the Sphere is hollow inside containing layers, just like the earth, crust, mantel, and core. Information goes deep or across, every piece of information is connected, think about the earliest string theory models for this.

Great thing about my visualization concept is I believe all this math exists, even though in reality string theory is mostly bunk, but the math to get there makes this possible. As the information goes deep, think about the iPad touch screen, or the Microsoft restaurant "menu on a table" concept, or the depictions of Minority Reports, moving of the screens by way of motion gestures, I believe Lockheed also has this concept up and running for air-traffic control systems, prototype versions, perhaps the military is already using it, as it has massive applications for the net centric battlespace visualization too.

Okay so, some levels go through a frame-burst scenario taking you into another level, where the data generally stored at the almost infinite number of grid points and cross connected to every other is nothing more than a nucleus with additional data spinning around it. But the user cannot access all that information, without clearances, the AI system has access to all of it, while a sorting system is a series of search features within search features, with non-linked data also. You can't break into it; it's not connected to the users' interface at all, think of the hidden data as electrons unattached around the data. The data is known to exist but cannot be accessed that would be the 5D level, and 6D level no human may get too, but the data exists.

You know that surfer dude in Hawaii that came up with the "Grand Theory of the Universe" why not use his model for our visualization, in spherical form, again, the mathematics for all this already exists.

You see, what I need is a way to find people like me, I want to find these thinkers and innovators to take it all to the next level, and if the visualization is there, we can find; The Good Guys, Bad Guys, and the Future all at once. Why do I want a "Neural Network" visualization system in a sphere? It seems to me that this is how the brain does things, and what we are doing here is creating a Collective Brain, using each individual assigned to an "ever-expanding" unit of data, along a carrier or flow.

Remember when Microsoft Labs came out with that really cool way to travel through the Universe and look at all the celestial bodies along the way, using all the Hubble Pictures collected? It's kind of like that, you travel to the information, discover as you travel and it piques your curiosity as you go triggering your own brain waves, and splashing the users minds with chemical rewards as they go, as they discover more information, expanding their understanding as well, it just seems to me this is how it all works anyway.

Think of that old Sci Fiction concept where the Earth and our solar system are merely an atom of a chemical compound within a cell of the human body, all we can see is all the other compounds around us because everything is so small, thus, we cannot see the whole picture and what appears to be an entire universe would only be a few thousand cells close enough for us to see. And time itself is slow, as the electrons or planets moving around the atom appears to take a year to circle the nucleus instead of 10,000 times a second.

So, combining all these types of thoughts, this is how I envision how the future visualization tools would work.

Now then, using the whole concept of connecting the dots for information or even building an AI search feature scouring the system at speeds of terabytes a second, the AI computer can become the innovator, thanks to the user asking the question, and all the neurons (individual humans) with all their data putting in the information. You just need the best questions, you get instance answers.

Okay so, take this concept one step further; the AI super computer's operation is a "brain wave" and that brain wave is assigned a number, you can have as many brain waves, as the internet has IP addresses, with whatever scheme for that you choose. And your query can search the former queries too. The user's questions are as important as the data itself.

Thus, it helps us find the innovators, the question askers, once we know that, we have the opportunity for unlimited instant knowledge. Data visualization can take us there, and it removes all the fog of uncertainty, and answers most all the questions we could ever hope to ask, and comes up with its own questions as well. Does this make sense?

This is the type of visualization I need to faster access information, and I can solve all the problems, even the ones humans refuse to solve, or doom themselves to repeateth. That's my preliminary thought on this - may we start such a dialogue on the topic? If so, email me, and I hope you enjoyed today's dialogue?




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining,-Visual-Analytics,-and-The-Human-Component!&id=4817019

Web Data Extraction Services and Data Collection Form Website Pages

For any business market research and surveys plays crucial role in strategic decision making. Web scrapping and data extraction techniques help you find relevant information and data for your business or personal use. Most of the time professionals manually copy-paste data from web pages or download a whole website resulting in waste of time and efforts.

Instead, consider using web scraping techniques that crawls through thousands of website pages to extract specific information and simultaneously save this information into a database, CSV file, XML file or any other custom format for future reference.

Examples of web data extraction process include:
• Spider a government portal, extracting names of citizens for a survey
• Crawl competitor websites for product pricing and feature data
• Use web scraping to download images from a stock photography site for website design

Automated Data Collection
Web scraping also allows you to monitor website data changes over stipulated period and collect these data on a scheduled basis automatically. Automated data collection helps you discover market trends, determine user behavior and predict how data will change in near future.

Examples of automated data collection include:
• Monitor price information for select stocks on hourly basis
• Collect mortgage rates from various financial firms on daily basis
• Check whether reports on constant basis as and when required

Using web data extraction services you can mine any data related to your business objective, download them into a spreadsheet so that they can be analyzed and compared with ease.

In this way you get accurate and quicker results saving hundreds of man-hours and money!

With web data extraction services you can easily fetch product pricing information, sales leads, mailing database, competitors data, profile data and many more on a consistent basis.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Web-Data-Extraction-Services-and-Data-Collection-Form-Website-Pages&id=4860417

Accelerating Accumulated Data Mining

We all have heard of Data Mining and we have all seen the abilities it can produce, but we also know how tedious the collection of data can be. It is the same for a little small company with a few customers as it is for a large company with millions of customers. Additionally how do you keep your data safe?

We have all heard of Identity Theft and the importance of secure data. But just because we have spent millions of dollars in IT work does not mean we know it is accurate? Things change fast you see; people get new telephone numbers, change addresses and jobs at least one of the three every three years. The chances of any database having accurate information is simply not possible.

Thus if we are data mining we need a way to verify which data sets are accurate and believe it or not the last set of data may not be the most accurate therefore we cannot simply discard the old data for the new data you see? We need ways to accelerate the accumulated data so we can run through it as fast as possible yet we must insure that our data mining techniques are taking into consideration miss matched data and incorrect data, along with inaccurate data.

Data Mining may have been over hyped a little and those business systems or even government data mining systems at the NSA; if they do not take into consideration these thoughts they are basically worthless and should not be considered you see? Think on this in 2006.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Accelerating-Accumulated-Data-Mining&id=202738

Understanding Data Mining

Well begun is half done. We can say that the invention of Internet is the greatest invention of the century which allows for quick information retrieval. It also has negative aspects, as it is an open forum therefore differentiating facts from fiction seems tough. It is the objective of every researcher to know how to perform mining of data on the Internet for accuracy of data. There are a number of search engines that provide powerful search results.

Knowing File Extensions in Data Mining

For mining data the first thing is important to know file extensions. Sites ending with dot-com are either commercial or sales sites. Since sales is involved there is a possibility that the collected information is inaccurate. Sites ending with dot-gov are of government departments, and these sites are reviewed by professionals. Sites ending with dot-org are generally for non-profit organizations. There is a possibility that the information is not accurate. Sites ending with dot-edu are of educational institutions, where the information is sourced by professionals. If you do not have an understanding you may take help of professional data mining services.

Knowing Search Engine Limitations for Data Mining

Second step is to understand when performing data mining is that majority search engines have filtering, file extension, or parameter. These are restrictions to be typed after your search term, for example: if you key in "marketing" and click "search," every site will be listed from dot-com sites having the term "marketing" on its website. If you key in "marketing site.gov," (without the quotation marks) only government department sites will be listed. If you key in "marketing site:.org" only non-profit organizations in marketing will be listed. However, if you key in "marketing site:.edu" only educational sites in marketing will be displayed. Depending on the kind of data that you want to mine after your search term you will have to enter "site.xxx", where xxx will being replaced by.com,.gov,.org or.edu.

Advanced Parameters in Data Mining

When performing data mining it is crucial to understand far beyond file extension that it is even possible to search particular terms, for example: if you are data mining for structural engineer's association of California and you key in "association of California" without quotation marks the search engine will display hundreds of sites having "association" and "California" in their search keywords. If you key in "association of California" with quotation marks, the search engine will display only sites having exactly the phrase "association of California" within the text. If you type in "association of California" site:.com, the search engine will display only sites having "association of California" in the text, from only business organizations.

If you find it difficult it is better to outsource data mining to companies like Online Web Research Services



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Understanding-Data-Mining&id=5608012

Data Mining

Data Mining is defined as the extraction of required information or knowledge from large databases. This is a powerful new technology with great potential to help companies focus on the most important information in their data warehouses. The tools related to this new technology predict future trends and behaviors, allowing businesses to make proactive, knowledge-driven decisions. The automated, prospective analysis offered by data mining move beyond the analysis of past events provided by retrospective tools typical of decision support systems. Data mining tools can answer business questions that traditionally were too time consuming to resolve. This new technology takes the process of knowledge and information acquisition beyond retrospective data access and navigation to prospective and proactive information delivery.

The Technology derives its name from the similarities between searching for valuable business information in a large database and mining a mountain for a vein of valuable ore. Both processes require either sifting through an immense amount of material, or intelligently probing it to find exactly where the value resides. Data mining automates the process of finding predictive information in large databases. Data mining tools sweep through databases and identify previously hidden patterns in one step. Data mining techniques can yield the benefits of automation on existing software and hardware platforms, and can be implemented on new systems as existing platforms are upgraded and new products developed.. Powerful systems for collecting data and managing it in large databases are in place in all large and mid-range companies.

Data Mining is predicted to be amongst the top five technologies of the world that are poised for fantastic growth and development in the next five years. Data Mining today assumes importance and significance because of the increasing thrust on knowledge and information which is an essential factor in successfully running ebusiness. Data Mining cannot replace completely human analysis and interaction. But it can greatly assist human intellect to take well thought out decisions through fast computing capabilities and through pinpointing thrust areas of the concerned business.

Data Mining is considered as the new thrust area technology, the blue-eyed boy of the ebusiness world, with great scope for expansion beyond the present day horizons of the e enterprises. Data is vital to the growth of ebusiness. And getting the right data at the right time is the crux of good business sense. Growth of web enterprises is dependent solely on knowledge and information processing. Data Mining therefore has arrived on the scene at the very appropriate time , helping these enterprises to achieve a number of complex tasks that would have taken up ages but for the advent of this marvelous new technology.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining&id=1217896

What You Need to Know About Popular Software - Data Mining Software

Simply put, data mining is the process of extracting hidden patterns from the organization's database. Over the years it has become a more and more important tool for adding value to the company's databases. Applications include business, medicine, science and engineering, and combating terrorism. This technique actually involves two very different processes, knowledge discovery and prediction. Knowledge discovery provides users with explicit information that in a sense is sitting in the database but has not been exposed. Prediction is an attempt to read into the future.

Data mining relies on the use of real-world data. To understand how this technology works we need first to review some basic concepts. Data are any facts whether numeric or textual that can be processed by a computer. The categories include operational, non-operational, and metadata. Operational or transactional elements include accounting, cost, inventory, and sales facts and figures. Non-operational elements include forecasts and information describing competitors and the industry as a whole. Metadata describes the data itself; it is required to set up and run the databases.

Data mining commonly performs four interrelated tasks: association rule learning, classification, clustering, and regression. Let's examine each in turn. Association rule learning, also known as market basket analysis, searches for relationships between variables. A classic example is a supermarket determining which products customers buy together. Customers who buy onions and potatoes often buy beef. Classification arranges data into predefined groups. This technology can do so in a sophisticated manner. In a related technique known as clustering the groups are not predefined. Regression involves data modeling.

It has been alleged that data mining has been used both in the United States and elsewhere to combat terrorism. As always in such cases, those who know don't say, and those who say don't know. One may surmise that these anti-terrorist applications look for unusual patterns. Many credit card holders have been contacted when their spending patterns changed substantially.

Data mining has become an important feature in many customer relationship management applications. For example, this technology enables companies to focus their marketing efforts on likely customers rather than trying to sell to everyone out there. Human resources applications help companies recruit and manage employees. We have already mentioned market basket analysis. Strategic enterprise management applications help a company transform corporate targets and goals into operational decisions such as hiring and factory scheduling.

Given its great power, many people are concerned with the human rights and privacy issues around data mining. Sophisticated applications could work its way around privacy safeguards. As the technology becomes more widespread and less expensive, these issues may become more urgent. As data is summarized the wrong conclusions can be drawn. This problem not only affects human rights but also the company's bottom line.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?What-You-Need-to-Know-About-Popular-Software---Data-Mining-Software&id=1920655

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.



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

Professional Data Entry Services - Ensure Maximum Security for Data

Though a lot of people have concerns about it, professional data entry services can actually ensure maximum security for your data. This is in addition to the quality and cost benefits that outsourcing provides anyway. The precautionary measures for data protection would begin from the time you provide your documents/files for entry to the service provider till completion of the project and delivery of the final output to you. Whether performed onshore or offshore, the security measures are stringent and effective. You only have to make sure you outsource to the right service provider. Making use of the free trials offered by different business process outsourcing companies would help you choose right.

BPO Company Measures for Data Protection and Confidentiality

• Data Remains on Central Servers - The company would ensure that all data remains on the central servers and also that all processing is done only on these servers. No text or images would leave the servers. The company's data entry operators cannot download or print any of this data.

• Original Documents Are Not Circulated - The source files or documents (hard copies) which you give to the service provider is not distributed as such to their staff. This source material is scanned with the help of high speed document scanners. The data would be keyed from scanned images or extracted utilizing text recognition techniques.

• Source Documents Safely Disposed Of - After use, your source documents would be disposed of in a secure manner. Whenever necessary, the BPO company would get assistance from a certified document destruction company. Such measures would keep your sensitive documents from falling into the hands of unauthorized personnel.

• Confidentiality - All staff would be required to sign confidentiality agreements. They would also be apprised of information protection policies that they would have to abide by. In addition, the different projects of various clients would be handled in segregated areas.

• Security Checks - Surprise security checks would be carried out to ensure that there is adherence to data security requirements when performing data entry services.

• IT Security - All computers used for the project would be password protected. These computers would additionally be provided with international quality anti-virus protection and advanced firewalls. The anti-virus software would be updated promptly.

• Backup - Regular backups would be done of information stored in the system. The backup data would be locked away securely.

• Other Measures - Other advanced measures that would be taken for information protection include maintenance of a material and personnel movement register, firewalls and intrusion detection, 24/7 security manning the company's premises, and 256 bit AES encryption.

Take Full Advantage of It

Take advantage of professional data entry services and ensure maximum security for your data. When considering a particular company to outsource to, do ask them about their security measures in addition to their pricing and turnaround.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Professional-Data-Entry-Services---Ensure-Maximum-Security-for-Data&id=6961870