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/

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/

Clustering in Data Mining

Clustering is a data mining process where data are viewed as points in a multidimensional space. Points that are “close” in this space are assigned to the same cluster. The clusters themselves are summarized by providing the centroid (central point) of the cluster group, and the average distance from the centroid to the points in the cluster. These cluster summaries are the summary of the entire data set. Having assigned sets of data in clusters, data mining techniques directly process a large amount of data with much greater computation effectiveness.

Ideally, points in the same cluster have small distances between them, while points in different clusters have large distances between them.

An illustration using social nets representation and their contribution to incoming web traffic is shown in next figure.
Figure A: Plotting the social networks on Visits / Pages per visit dimensions.

We can see just by looking at the diagram that the social nets fall into three clusters. The networks clustered disclose some common features. While the ‘Linkedin’ network is ahead in number of visits, the networks in the middle of the figure exhibit better pages per visit behavior. With small amounts of data, any clustering algorithm will establish the clusters, and simply plotting the points and “eyeballing” the plot will suffice as well.
Clustering formations algorithms

Clustering algorithms are clustered (!) into two groups that follow two fundamentally different strategies.

    Hierarchical algorithms start with each point as its own cluster. Clusters are combined based on their “closeness”, using one of many possible definitions of “close”. Merging clusters together stops when further combination leads to clusters that are ineffective for one or several parameters.
    The other class of algorithms are based on point assignment. Points are considered in some order, and each one is assigned to the cluster into which it best fits. Variations allow occasional combining or splitting of clusters, or may allow points to be unassigned if they are too far from any of the current clusters.

Algorithms for large amounts of data often take shortcuts, since it is not feasible to pass thru all pairs of points. For example, with 1,000,000 points the computation degree will be over a half a trillion operations.

The algorithms differ depending on the data model, whether static with no point added in the future, or dynamic where more data are to be worked with. The latter does require more flexibility because of cluster features needing to be re-calculated.

More reading on clustering algorithms may be found here (starting from section  7.1.2 “Clustering Strategies”).
Euclidean space in clustering

An N-dimensional Euclidean space is one where points are vectors of N real numbers. The conventional distance measure (d) in the space is defined:

In a Euclidean space it is possible to summarize a collection of points by their centroid – the average of the points.

In a non-Euclidean space, there is no notion of a centroid, and we are forced to develop another way to summarize clusters (ex. one or several representatives of a cluster). Consider the summarizing of books by categories based on the frequency of similar words in their titles.
Some problems if clustering in non-Euclidean spaces

Representing a cluster in any non-Euclidean space is an issue, because we cannot replace a collection of points by their centroid. Therefore the algorithms to be applied to the data in this space are more sophisticated.

Given the example with social nets contributing into target web traffic, the dimensions are clear ‘visits’ and ‘pages per visit’, numeric. Yet the clustering might be done with other non-numerical parameters as: how the posts/ads in those nets are inserted, or the difficulty-degree/man-power of putting backlinks in those nets and others.

The big challenge is to cluster documents by their topic, based on the occurrence of common but unusual words in the documents. It is also challenging to cluster moviegoers by the type or types of movies they like.

Given that we cannot combine points in a cluster when the space is non-Euclidean, our only choice is to pick one of the points of the cluster itself to represent the cluster. Ideally, this point is close to all the points of the cluster, so it in some sense lies in the “center”. The representative point is called the clustroid. Applying to moviegoers we might define as a clustroid the people who like a certain movie (cannot be called “central movie”) that has a least “non-Euclidean distance” to other movies in cluster.

Here we have briefly touched on the clustering problem in data mining, so in the future we’ll post on the algorithms and methods for clustering as well as data mining frameworks. For more reading on clustering go to the Mining of massive data sets book.



Source: http://extract-web-data.com/clustering-in-data-mining/

Outsourcing - Data Entry Solutions

Data entry is an important core area of any company. Hiring an outsourcing firm to carry out this critical task is important decision that companies face as they look further to cut labor costs. Professional data entry companies only hire experienced persons in order to meet clients ever increasing data entry demands, and this includes outsourcing firms...if you know the right one to choose. When considering outsourcing as a solution to your data entry needs, you have to look deeply into the training of your overseas reps.

The proper training of your reps should be apparent and easy to investigate. One way that is important to finding out this info is to personally review and interview your prospective reps. Getting to know first hand the firm and it's training policies will give you peace of mind when hiring your first outsourcing firm. Time is money for your firm. You will need to know what kind of turnaround time you should expect from a overseas rep. With the all important task of data entry, the quality of technology and equipment is a important consideration. Do they have the state of the art technology, as well as the back up systems in place to ensure proper turn around and safety of critical documents?

A proper interview of your prospective outsourcing reps can put these concerns to rest. You should have a personal one-on-one talk with your overseas assistant to really get to know that person that you have entrusted with a core task of your company. Are the equipment specs and current technology of use available to list to your firm? And do the reps get a continuing education in the fast paced technology updates as they become available? Knowing exactly what kind of training and on what equipment will put your mind at ease.

When you consider an outsourcing company, the interview process may be the most important part of your search. The company principals should be willing and ready to provide the stats you need to make sure your data entry, Internet marketing and IT tasks will be complete with backed up safety and a fast turnaround. The decisions you make now will have an impact on your business future. This is not the time to make costly mistakes. Be careful that you are making the right choice before you sign the dotted line.





Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Outsourcing---Data-Entry-Solutions&id=2712577

Data Entry Outsourcing Eases Handling of Your Business

Running a business of any kind successfully is not an easy task and as a business owner one must put in lots of effort in this direction. There are different aspects of a business which one needs to monitor constantly and see how the business is doing actually. Data entry is one such aspects of any business that needs to be handled properly for making your business a successful venture. There are many other aspects and each component has its own importance, so being a business owner it is your prerogative to decide which ones are on priority for your business. Often it is not possible on the part of the business owner to take care of all aspects of business as he does not have professional qualifications to do so. So in such a scenario outsourcing is an option that can be adopted to take care of this.

Data entry outsourcing is one aspect of a business which is undertaken on a huge scale by several companies. Global statistics on outsourcing indicate that the process is one the rise and many companies have been immensely benefited by this. One of the main reasons why this has become such a common phenomenon is the fact that the services are available from highly qualified professionals at a very low cost. Data entry services provided by outsourcing companies offer various services under this. So it does not matter what type of data entry services you require, everything will be taken care of by these outsourcing service providing companies.

Having records of a business in the correct manner is very important if one wants to make their business a success. The need for data entry in organizations is on a daily basis and if done on time, one can actually manage all the records in just the correct way. So it may be that you may require the services of the professionals who work for data entry outsourcing daily, weekly or on a monthly basis. This depends on the kind of business you are running and you have to decide what type of data entry outsourcings services you want to have for your business. Today maintaining all the records of company through data entry services manually is apse. In fact with the huge amount of data and other information which any business possesses this is not at all possible.

While you are seeking an outsourcing company to help you out in taking care of this work, you have to be careful about certain aspects. You will be handing over certain important elements of your business to an outside party to a third party, so you need to find out the credentials of the company. Make sure that you get the work done from a reputed company and do not fall prey to the hands of any fake company that are operating in the market. The business is your and it's your responsibility to ensure that you hire the services of the best firm to handle your data entry outsourcing work.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Entry-Outsourcing-Eases-Handling-of-Your-Business&id=566609

Data Mining - Retrieving Information From Data

Data mining definition is the process of retrieving information from data. It has become very important now days because data that is processed is usually kept for future reference and mainly for security purposes in a company. Data transforms is processed into information and it is mostly used in different ways depending on what information one is extracting and from where the person is extracting the information.

It is commonly used in marketing, scientific information and research work, fraud detection and surveillance and many more and most of this work is done using a computer. This definition can come in different terms data snooping, data fishing and data dredging all this refer to data mining but it depends in which department one is. One must know data mining definition so that he can be in a position to make data.

The method of data mining has been there for so many centuries and it is used up to date. There were early methods which were used to identify data mining there are mainly two: regression analysis and bayes theorem. These methods are never used now days because a lot of people have advanced and technology has really changed the entire system.

With the coming up or with the introduction of computers and technology, it becomes very fast and easy to save information. Computers have made work easier and one can be able to expand more knowledge about data crawling and learn on how data is stored and processed through computer science.

Computer science is a course that sharpens one skill and expands more about data crawling and the definition of what data mining means. By studying computer science one can be in a position to know: clustering, support vector machines and decision trees there are some of the units that are found on computer science.

It's all about all this and this knowledge must be applied here. Government institutions, small scale business and supermarkets use data.

The main reason most companies use data mining is because data assist in the collection of information and observations that a company goes through in their daily activity. Such information is very vital in any companies profile and needs to be checked and updated for future reference just in case something happens.

Businesses which use data crawling focus mainly on return of investments, and they are able to know whether they are making a profit or a loss within a very short period. If the company or the business is making a profit they can be in a position to give customers an offer on the product in which they are selling so that the business can be a position to make more profit in an organization, this is very vital in human resource departments it helps in identifying the character traits of a person in terms of job performance.

Most people who use this method believe that is ethically neutral. The way it is being used nowadays raises a lot of questions about security and privacy of its members. Data mining needs good data preparation which can be in a position to uncover different types of information especially those that require privacy.

A very common way in this occurs is through data aggregation.

Data aggregation is when information is retrieved from different sources and is usually put together so that one can be in a position to be analyze one by one and this helps information to be very secure. So if one is collecting data it is vital for one to know the following:

    How will one use the data that he is collecting?
    Who will mine the data and use the data.
    Is the data very secure when am out can someone come and access it.
    How can one update the data when information is needed
    If the computer crashes do I have any backup somewhere.

It is important for one to be very careful with documents which deal with company's personal information so that information cannot easily be manipulated.

Victor Cases has many hobbies and interests. As well being a keen blogger and article writer for many sites, he has also recently created a site focusing on data mining definition. The site is constantly being updated and has articles such as data mining to read.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining---Retrieving-Information-From-Data&id=5054887

Offshore Data Entry Work in India

Importance of Clerical Data Entry Conversion!

Data entry services are helpful to improve performance standards of any kind of businesses, whether it is a small firm or big organization. These services allow us to increase the rhythm of our business activities and operations with higher speed. By doing this, we can save our time, money and furthermore data entry services provide us many other competitive advantages.

Data entry services play important role in today's Business Industries as they include many important professional and business services e.g. offshore data entry, data conversion services, online data entry, offline data entry, document and image processing, image entry, Insurance Claim Entry, Offline and Online Data Conversion Jobs, offline as well as online data entry jobs.

Now looking at data conversion services and benefits of it. The need for data conversion is essential for any business organization or firm to run their business effectively. Data conversion services can be defined as the translation of data from one format to another. Data stored in an earlier system is imported into a newer one. Data Conversion Services can range from a simple one for one import to a complex procedure where non-relational data needs to be imported, validated, cleansed and split up into multiple tables in a new relational database structure.

Some services that data conversion includes are:

* Document Conversion

* XML Conversion

* HTML Conversion

* SGML Conversion

* CAD Conversion

* Catalog Conversion

* Book Conversion

* PDF Conversion

Now let's come on Data processing. Irrespective of company, whether it's a small company or bigger organization, it's very useful. It is not just about the process of implementing the data or say information in the right place at the right time; it also covers a range of various methods for how data is processed and to what limit data is going to give the best of results for your company or business organizations.

Various types of data processing services are: Data mining, Data cleansing, Check processing, Image processing, Form processing, OCR clean up, Insurance claim processing, Survey processing. These data processing services are helpful in streamlining a wide range of corporate activities and operations. Data processing and related other services are not only good to present the full and processed data that is to be used for the overall benefit rather their primary function is to present an insightful explanation of the data.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Offshore-Data-Entry-Work-in-India&id=1038279

About Outsourcing Data Entry Services

Data can be defined as numbers or characters that usually represent the dimensions or measurements. Data entry can be applied to any process that coverts data from one form to another. These services cover almost all business and professional services like data conversion, online and offline data entry, document and image processing; image entry, insurance claim entry, data processing, form processing, etc. Also collecting numerous data related to certain topics and then to present them in meaningful & easy to understand presentations.

Data entry services are very useful in business firms and organizations as there is a huge demand of entry work. These services are considered as the central part in any of the businesses. These services are useful to organize and manage your data/information in digital format. One of the types is data processing that generally programmed on a mainframe, minicomputer, microcomputer or personal computer. These systems are used for entry related work and to convert data into information.

About Data Entry Outsourcing
Outsourcing means to hire the services from a third party for your requirements. No sooner did outsourcing get support from the global technological development than business organizations started outsourcing entry. Data entry outsourcing is a simple contract between two different identities for any type of data entry service.

The main purpose for doing outsourcing is the availability of qualified and experienced computer operators at low cost. There are various types of entry operations such as data conversion, data processing, catalog processing services, image enhancement, image editing and photo manipulation services, etc, provided by BPO Services firms.

How helpful Services are?
o Data entry services help the companies for sharpening their foundation, analyzing their operations, strategies, policies, activities.

o Data processing services also encircle a variety of methods for how data is processed and to what extent the data is prepared to yield the best of the outcomes for the company.

o Data Conversion services help the business to convert information into easy format that is useful to increase online and offline popularity of business.

These all mechanisms help large as well as small business to enhance their internal process. These also help companies to increase their productivity and develop healthy external contacts.

Bea Arthur invites you to Data Entry India, which provides Data Entry Services, Data Conversion Services, and Data Processing Services. They have vast experience in all types of services.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?About-Outsourcing-Data-Entry-Services&id=2747714

Outsourcing Data Entry Services to Ease Your Workload

In today's competitive environment, data entry outsourcing allows global business organizations to maintain uptime and to be competitively effective. From industries to individuals, professional to retailers all prefers to outsource their back office work to ease their workload at low market rates. these is not a difficult process but it consumes lot of time and main obstacle is that company need to hire expert people for this service.Benefits of Data Entry Outsourcing

Outsourcing give benefits you financially as well as strategically. outsourcing gives you benefits by saving time and cost which allow you to increase you business productivity. Many people prefer to outsource their work due to high level of accuracy and low level of cost. Specially trained professional from offshore countries provide you excellent services with significant suggestions. There are several advantages of data entry outsourcing some major advantages are:

    Advantage of low cost services
    Fast delivery
    Access of specialized service
    Focusing energy and workforce on your core business
    Save manpower and training costs
    Increased customer satisfaction


Data entry services include simple text entry work to alpha numerical entries requires complex calculations. To meet the high flow of work many firms use modern word processing software and hire skilled professional in fast keyboard operating.

Business process outsourcing units engaged in providing this services give quick, well-organized and secure solutions to retain their place in competitive outsourcing market. Many organizations provide high level of accuracy with complete confidentiality. These companies also utilize the services of proofreaders in an effort to give high accurate service.

Whether you are a globally operating organization or simple in-house freelancer data entry outsourcing can become your strategic partner to achieve organizational excellence and enjoy business success.

Offshore companies provide data entry and financial services like document management, data processing, data conversion, document conversion, scanning and indexing, data cleaning services with use of latest software. Many organizations have in-house research team constantly looking for new ways to increase productivity and effectiveness.

Author is related to data entry outsourcing firm 3alphadataentry.com. Author regularly write articles on data entry services and benefits of outsourcing data entry services.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Outsourcing-Data-Entry-Services-to-Ease-Your-Workload&id=2555166

Organizations Outsourcing Data Entry to Data Entry Companies

Gradually, Companies are adapting outsourcing option as business strategy. It is strategy of hiring a company to carry out definite tasks rather than engaging employee for such. Most of the companies outsource their supportive activities. Now, workforce of company can give special attention to the key business activities. You can depend on the expert for specific support activity.

Data entry is one of the most utilized outsourcing services. Organizations are commonly utilizing this service for better support. There is high demand of data entry companies so the firms are growing very fast.

Information is the most critical asset of any company. Executives can able to make good business decisions by getting essential information correctly and collectively. Thus, Organizations are searching for high quality and experienced copy typing solution. Generally, companies are seeking for below mention qualities:

> Very detail oriented solution
> Highly trained employee
> Good creation and managerial ability in handling customized project plan
> And security that meets the requirement

There are various industries that require data typing solution. Any company can outsource their requirement to increase the performance of core activities. Let's take an example of university. There is bulk of admissions every year and too much collection of data. It is not easy to manage every record as paper document. So, data entry can help to protect important information through digitization of data.

There is a wide range of data typing solutions offered by outsourcing companies. Here is the some data typing outsourcing services from huge list like medical research, banking form filling, manufacturing firms, insurance companies and direct marketing through emails.

You can surely get tremendous opportunity for business expansion and growth by having benefits of data entry services. The data typing outsourcing companies can deliver very effective and accurate output. They have enough setup and skilled employee for quick delivery. Certainly, you can lower the cost by outsourcing the requirement. Upgraded technologies help companies to make trust on outsourcing companies. There are various data typing companies using special authentication system to improve data security.

Advice: "Rather than managing huge staff and offering benefits to them, as a wise company outsource your entry requirement."




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Organizations-Outsourcing-Data-Entry-to-Data-Entry-Companies&id=4467342

Effective Online Data Entry Services

The outsourcing market has many enthusiastic buyers who have paid a small amount to online data entry service providers. They carry the opinion that they have paid too low as against the work they have got done. Online services is helpful to a number of smaller business units who take these projects as their significant source of occupation.

Online data-entry services include data typing, product entry, web and mortgage research, data mining as well as extraction services. Service providers allot proficient workforce at your service who timely deliver best possible results. They have updated technology, guaranteeing 100% data security.

Few obvious benefits found by outsourcing online data entry:

    Business units receive quality online entry services from projects owners.
    Entering data is the first step for companies through which they get the understanding of the work that makes strategic decisions. The raw data represented by mere numbers soon turns to be a decision making factor accelerating the progress of the business.
    Systems used by these services are completely protected to maintain high level of security.
    As you increasingly obtain high quality of information the business executive of the company is expected to arrive at extraordinary decisions which influence progress in the company.
    Shortened turnaround time.
    Cutting down on cost by saving on operational overheads.

Companies are highly fascinated by the benefits of outsourcing your projects for these services, as it saves time as well as money.

Flourishing companies want to concentrate on their key business activities instead of exploring into such non-key business activities. They take a wise step of outsourcing their work to data-entry-services and keep themselves free for their core business functions.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Effective-Online-Data-Entry-Services&id=5681261

Data Mining Prevention by Poker Sites or What to do About WrecklessJoe55

As the ingenuity of third party program designers continues to challenge poker sites that need to ensure security for their users, along comes an upstart poker site that has changed one simple rule which could essentially solve a lot of problems for any player concerned about their long term statistics being examined by ruthless competitors.

Firstly though, let's define data mining for those who may not be sure what it is exactly. Data mining is the exchange of shared profiling information amongst a community of other players. As a player on most any online poker sites, it's quite likely you have been tracked through banned programs like Poker Sherlock or Poker Edge or had your information handed over via hand histories in another program called Poker Tracker. Although Poker Stars and Party Poker make this much more difficult (scanning your hard drive for such software) there are round-about tricks that enable them to work but you wouldn't want to describe them as smooth by any means.

Now the advantage of having access to a shared database of information about opponents is that if you happened to join an online table using this software, one or some of your opponents may be displayed via HUD some valuable statistics that may help your decision making during hand. Let's say for example that you are in a hand with a player named WrecklessJoe55. You are holding Th9h and the board shows Jc8cQc Ac and 2d. There is a big river bet put to you for the remainder of your stack to call. We will ignore the odds situation here for now, because either way, it's not the easiest call in the world.

Now let's say that through a purchased exchange of 100,000 hand histories via Poker Tracker you actually have some historical information on WrecklessJoe55 which clearly makes him a maniacal LAG player. Well that information would be leading towards a call. Just the opposite, if WrecklessJoe55 had a VPIP of 11% and PFR% of 7% along with a WSDW% of 72%, then these TAG statistics would be leading toward a fold - in fact I'd be almost sure of it.

The disdain poker sites have for these types of software is that you have never played with WrecklessJoe55 and you shouldn't know that information until YOU have ascertained it, not someone else. Yes, just like a regular live poker room. The Poker Stars security staff basically once told me that that is the guideline with which they want to emulate and all security policy emanates from that thinking.

Now we get to Cake Poker, an upstart network that is actually accepting USA player online! They came up with a policy that would essentially crush the inherent value in any data-mining program. It's rather simple too, as stated on the Cake Poker website:

"CakePoker players will be granted the option of changing their Poker Nickname every 7 Days. By allowing players to change their Poker Nickname often, CakePoker thus negates the effectiveness of shared or prolonged poker data tracking."

I wonder how much time and resources Poker Stars and Party Poker would save in their overall security budget if they adopted the same policy? Allow the players to change their name! It's simple! Big kudos to CakePoker for allowing this defence, in the name of protecting its players. Now although it no longer emulates a real live poker room, it definitely makes for a level playing field, and that's something to think about for the major players to be sure.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Prevention-by-Poker-Sites-or-What-to-do-About-WrecklessJoe55&id=982153

Data Entry - Why Outsourcing Data Entry Is Beneficial for Business

Data is very important and basic part for any business organization. You can access it easily by maintaining your data into single data base. Accurately managed data can increase your business efficiency.

In the present globalized world, to save huge amount of time, expenses, resources all business firms, medical firms, banking firms, telecoms companies outsource their requirements to trusted offshore outsourcing company. There are many offshore outsourcing company provides their data entry services in UK, USA, Canada, Australia and other part of world.

Many outsourcing company provides custom data entry services as per client needs. An outsourcing company provides below mention services accurately:

• Entry of online and offline basis
• Entry of image
• Entry of document
• Entry of form
• Entry of survey and business reports
• Entry of legal documents
• Entry of alphabetical and numeric information
• Entry of MS word and MS excel

Outsourcing has lot of advantages. Some of the benefits of outsourcing are described below:

• Output within short turnaround time with the highest level of accuracy
• Save expenses behind human resources, accommodation
• Information of database will be kept confidential and safe
• Projects handled by well-trained and experience experts
• Delivering after checking by quality control department
• Reduce management headache and burden
• Focus all productive time and cost in to core business

Having numerous benefits outsourcing is a great option to increase business proficiency and productivity but it is required to outsource a trusted and genuine company. Business firms outsource their projects to outsourcing company because of high level of accuracy, timely deliveries and total confidentiality. Outsourcing is helpful to save cost and increase profitability.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Entry---Why-Outsourcing-Data-Entry-Is-Beneficial-for-Business&id=4883581

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.




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Is Web Scraping Relevant in Today's Business World?

Different techniques and processes have been created and developed over time to collect and analyze data. Web scraping is one of the processes that have hit the business market recently. It is a great process that offers businesses with vast amounts of data from different sources such as websites and databases.

It is good to clear the air and let people know that data scraping is legal process. The main reason is in this case is because the information or data is already available in the internet. It is important to know that it is not a process of stealing information but rather a process of collecting reliable information. Most people have regarded the technique as unsavory behavior. Their main basis of argument is that with time the process will be over flooded and therefore lead to parity in plagiarism.

We can therefore simply define web scraping as a process of collecting data from a wide variety of different websites and databases. The process can be achieved either manually or by the use of software. The rise of data mining companies has led to more use of the web extraction and web crawling process. Other main functions such companies are to process and analyze the data harvested. One of the important aspects about these companies is that they employ experts. The experts are aware of the viable keywords and also the kind of information which can create usable statistic and also the pages that are worth the effort. Therefore the role of data mining companies is not limited to mining of data but also help their clients be able to identify the various relationships and also build the models.

Some of the common methods of web scraping used include web crawling, text gripping, DOM parsing, and expression matching. The latter process can only be achieved through parsers, HTML pages or even semantic annotation. Therefore there are many different ways of scraping the data but most importantly they work towards the same goal. The main objective of using web scraping service is to retrieve and also compile data contained in databases and websites. This is a must process for a business to remain relevant in the business world.

The main questions asked about web scraping touch on relevance. Is the process relevant in the business world? The answer to this question is yes. The fact that it is employed by large companies in the world and has derived many rewards says it all. It is important to note that many people regarded this technology as a plagiarism tool and others consider it as a useful tool that harvests the data required for the business success.

Using of web scraping process to extract data from the internet for competition analysis is highly recommended. If this is the case, then you must be sure to spot any pattern or trend that can work in a given market.



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