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/

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

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 Entry - Why Are Data Entry Services So Cheap?

Data entry has become a requirement these days for a lot of company that need to have their physical data input in order to make digital files out of them. This is turn makes the documents more manageable and accessible and saves a lot of time and space whilst improving efficiency. So how can companies that offer data entry charge such a low rate for the services?

Well it can all depend on the type of data that is being input. For example, if the data that needs making digital is already from a document which has been typed and printed or typed using a typewriter then sophisticated software can be used in order to extract the data quickly and simply. This means that because the process is automated, this saves a lot of time and man power. Often this software will have been developed in-house or especially for the company themselves.

If the data is handwritten then it will need to be input manually, and this is where things can get a little more expensive. But amazingly, not by much. Data entry has become increasingly cheap over the last few years and the main reason for this is outsourcing. A lot of companies, whether admitting it or not, may be outsourcing the work to the east where the work can be done at that same level or quality for significantly less. A lot of companies are fine with admitting this, but others are not so sure, primarily because this may put people off the service. However in our experience, the data capture staff that we have used have excellent English skills and offer work done to a similar level to that of an English-language based company.

If you're not sure you like the idea of this and are looking at getting data entry or data capture completed, ask the company where they have their data captured from. Most companies will be honest and tell you, but it's usually fairly obvious by the rate that they charge for the data entry itself. Ask how long they have worked with the data capturing company for and also make sure to request a sample of their work and perhaps the data entry company will be willing to get a sample made especially for you. But make sure to look for companies which have secured the ISO 9001:2000 as this ensures that work is checked over by a third-party to ensure quality.

Steve Wright is marketing manager with Pearl Scan solutions a document scanning and data entry company from the UK. We offer top quality data entry services for our clients with a 98% accuracy rating. Ask us about our data entry staff if you'd like to know more and we'd be happy to tell you more.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Entry---Why-Are-Data-Entry-Services-So-Cheap?&id=6193944

Data Mining For Professional Service Firms - The Marketing Mother Lode May Already Be in Your Files

No one needs to tell you about the value of information in today's world--particularly the value of information that could help grow your practice. But has it occurred to you that you probably have more information in your head and your existing files that you realize? Tap into this gold mine of data to develop a powerful and effective marketing plan that will pull clients in the door and push your profitability up.

The way to do this is with data mining, which is the process of using your existing client data and demographics to highlight trends, make predictions and plan strategies.

In other words, do what other kinds of businesses have been doing for years: Analyze your clients by industry and size of business, the type and volume of services used, the amount billed, how quickly they pay and how profitable their business is to you. With this information, you'll be able to spot trends and put together a powerful marketing plan.

To data mine effectively, your marketing department needs access to client demographics and financial information. Your accounting department needs to provide numbers on the services billed, discounts given, the amounts actually collected, and receivables aging statistics. You may identify a specific service being utilized to a greater than average degree by a particular industry group, revealing a market segment worth pursuing. Or you may find an industry group that represents a significant portion of your billed revenue, but the business is only marginally profitable because of write-offs and discounts. In this case, you may want to shift your marketing focus.

You should also look at client revenues and profitability by the age of the clients. If your percentage of new clients is high, it could mean you're not retaining a sufficient number of existing clients. If you see too few new clients, you may be in for problems when natural client attrition is not balanced by new client acquisition.

The first step in effective data mining is to get everyone in the firm using the same information system. This allows everyone in the office who needs the names and addresses of the firm's clients and contacts to have access to that data. Require everyone to record notes on conversations and meetings in the system. Of course, the system should also accommodate information that users don't want to share, such as client's private numbers or the user's personal contacts. This way, everyone can utilize the system for everything, which makes them more likely to use it completely.

Your information system can be either contact information or customer relationship management software (a variety of packages are on the market) or you can have a system custom designed. When considering software to facilitate data mining, look at three key factors:

1. Ease of use. If the program isn't easy to use, it won't get used, and will end up being just a waste of time and money.

2. Accessibility. The system must allow for data to be accessible from anywhere, including laptops, hand-held devices, from the internet or cell phones. The data should also be accessible from a variety of applications so it can be used by everyone in the office all the time, regardless of where they are.

3. Sharability. Everyone needs to be able to access the information, but you also need privacy and editing rights so you can assign or restrict what various users can see and input.

Don't overlook the issue of information security. Beyond allowing people the ability to code certain entries as private, keep in mind that anyone with access to the system as the ability to either steal information or sabotage your operation. Talk to your software vendor about various security measures but don't let too much security make the system unusable. Protect yourself contractually with noncompete and nondisclosure agreements and be sure to back up your data regularly.

Finally, expect some staffers to resist when you ask them to change from the system they've been using. You may have to sell them on the benefits outweighing the pain of making a change and learning the new system--which means you need to be totally sold on it yourself. The managing partner, or the leader of the firm, needs to be driving this initiative for it to succeed. When it does succeed, you'll be able to focus your marketing dollars and efforts in the most profitable areas with the least expense, with a tremendous positive impact on the bottom line.

Jacquelyn Lynn is a business writer and ghostwriter based in Orlando, Florida. She is the author or ghostwriter of more than 25 books, including Entrepreneur's Almanac; Online Shopper's Survival Guide; Make Big Profits on eBay (with Charlene Davis); In Search of the Five-Cent Nickel (with Don Abbott); and 11 titles in Entrepreneur Media's StartUp Guide series.

Jacquelyn writes and ghostwrites a wide range of materials, including articles, newsletters, brochures, social media copy, blogs, website copy, books, ebooks, white papers, special reports, and more. Visit her website at http://www.jacquelynlynn.com to sign up to receive free business tips via email.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-For-Professional-Service-Firms---The-Marketing-Mother-Lode-May-Already-Be-in-Your-Files&id=4607430

Limitations and Challenges in Effective Web Data Mining

Web data mining and data collection is critical process for many business and market research firms today. Conventional Web data mining techniques involve search engines like Google, Yahoo, AOL, etc and keyword, directory and topic-based searches. Since the Web's existing structure cannot provide high-quality, definite and intelligent information, systematic web data mining may help you get desired business intelligence and relevant data.

Factors that affect the effectiveness of keyword-based searches include:
• Use of general or broad keywords on search engines result in millions of web pages, many of which are totally irrelevant.
• Similar or multi-variant keyword semantics my return ambiguous results. For an instant word panther could be an animal, sports accessory or movie name.
• It is quite possible that you may miss many highly relevant web pages that do not directly include the searched keyword.

The most important factor that prohibits deep web access is the effectiveness of search engine crawlers. Modern search engine crawlers or bot can not access the entire web due to bandwidth limitations. There are thousands of internet databases that can offer high-quality, editor scanned and well-maintained information, but are not accessed by the crawlers.

Almost all search engines have limited options for keyword query combination. For example Google and Yahoo provide option like phrase match or exact match to limit search results. It demands for more efforts and time to get most relevant information. Since human behavior and choices change over time, a web page needs to be updated more frequently to reflect these trends. Also, there is limited space for multi-dimensional web data mining since existing information search rely heavily on keyword-based indices, not the real data.

Above mentioned limitations and challenges have resulted in a quest for efficiently and effectively discover and use Web resources. Send us any of your queries regarding Web Data mining processes to explore the topic in more detail.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Limitations-and-Challenges-in-Effective-Web-Data-Mining&id=5012994

Data Mining vs Screen-Scraping

Data mining isn't screen-scraping. I know that some people in the room may disagree with that statement, but they're actually two almost completely different concepts.

In a nutshell, you might state it this way: screen-scraping allows you to get information, where data mining allows you to analyze information. That's a pretty big simplification, so I'll elaborate a bit.

The term "screen-scraping" comes from the old mainframe terminal days where people worked on computers with green and black screens containing only text. Screen-scraping was used to extract characters from the screens so that they could be analyzed. Fast-forwarding to the web world of today, screen-scraping now most commonly refers to extracting information from web sites. That is, computer programs can "crawl" or "spider" through web sites, pulling out data. People often do this to build things like comparison shopping engines, archive web pages, or simply download text to a spreadsheet so that it can be filtered and analyzed.

Data mining, on the other hand, is defined by Wikipedia as the "practice of automatically searching large stores of data for patterns." In other words, you already have the data, and you're now analyzing it to learn useful things about it. Data mining often involves lots of complex algorithms based on statistical methods. It has nothing to do with how you got the data in the first place. In data mining you only care about analyzing what's already there.

The difficulty is that people who don't know the term "screen-scraping" will try Googling for anything that resembles it. We include a number of these terms on our web site to help such folks; for example, we created pages entitled Text Data Mining, Automated Data Collection, Web Site Data Extraction, and even Web Site Ripper (I suppose "scraping" is sort of like "ripping"). So it presents a bit of a problem-we don't necessarily want to perpetuate a misconception (i.e., screen-scraping = data mining), but we also have to use terminology that people will actually use.

Todd Wilson is the owner of screen-scraper.com (http://www.screen-scraper.com/), a company which specializes in data extraction from web pages. While not scraping screens Todd is hard at work finishing up a doctoral degree in Instructional Psychology and Technology.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-vs-Screen-Scraping&id=146813

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

Data Extraction Services For Better Outputs in Your Business

Data Extraction can be defined as the process of retrieving data from an unstructured source in order to process it further or store it. It is very useful for large organizations who deal with large amount of data on a daily basis that need to be processed into meaningful information and stored for later use. The data extraction is a systematic way to extract and structure data from scattered and semi-structured electronic documents, as found on the web and in various data warehouses.

In today's highly competitive business world, vital business information such as customer statistics, competitor's operational figures and inter-company sales figures play an important role in making strategic decisions. By signing on this service provider, you will be get access to critivcal data from various sources like websites, databases, images and documents.

It can help you take strategic business decisions that can shape your business' goals. Whether you need customer information, nuggets into your competitor's operations and figure out your organization's performance, it is highly critical to have data at your fingertips as and when you want it. Your company may be crippled with tons of data and it may prove a headache to control and convert the data into useful information. Data extraction services enable you get data quickly and in the right format.

Few areas where Data Extraction can help you are:

    Capturing financial data
    Generating better sales leads
    Conducting market research, survey and analysis
    Conducting product research and analysis
    Track, extract and harvest product pricing data
    Searching for specific job postings
    Duplicating an online database
    Acquiring real estate data
    Processing auction information
    Searching online newspapers for latest pricing information
    Extracting and summarize news stories from online news sources

Outsourcing companies provide custom made data extraction services to the client's requirements. The different types of data extraction services;

    Web extraction
    Database extraction

Outsourcing is the beneficial option for large organizations seeking to manage large information. Outsourcing this services helps businesses in managing their data effectively, which in turn enables business to experience an increase in profits. By outsourcing, you can certainly increase your competitive edge and save costs too!



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Extraction-Services-For-Better-Outputs-in-Your-Business&id=2760257

Unraveling the Data Mining Mystery - The Key to Dramatically Higher Profits

Data mining is the art of extracting nuggets of gold from a set of seemingly meaningless and random data. For the web, this data can be in the form of your server hit log, a database of visitors to your website or customers that have actually purchased from your web site at one time or another.

Today, we will look at how examining customer purchases can give you big clues to revising/improving your product selection, offering style and packaging of products for much greater profits from both your existing customers and an increased visitor to customer ratio.

To get a feel for this, lets take a look at John, a seller of vitamins and nutritional products on the internet. He has been online for two years and has made a fairly good living at selling vitamins and such online but knows he can do better but isn't sure how.

John was smart enough to keep all customer sales data in a database which was a good idea because it is now available for analysis. The first step is for John to run several reports from his database.

In this instance, these reports include: repeat customers, repeat customer frequency, most popular items, least popular items, item groups, item popularity by season, item popularity by geographic region and repeat orders for the same products. Lets take a brief look at each report and how it could guide John to greater profits.

    Repeat Customers - If I know who my repeat customers are, I can make special offers to them via email or offer them incentive coupons (if automated) surprise discounts at the checkout stand for being such a good customer.
    Repeat Customer Frequency - By knowing how often your customer buys from you, you can start tailoring automatic ship programs for that customer where every so many weeks, you will automatically ship the products the customer needs without the hassle of reordering. It shows the customer that you really value his time and appreciate his business.
    Repeat Orders - By knowing what a customer repeatedly buys and by knowing about your other products, you can make suggestions for additional complimentaty products for the customer to add to the order. You could even throw in free samples for the customer to try. And of course, you should try to get the customer on an auto-ship program.
    Most Popular Items - By knowing what items are purchased the most, you will know what items to highlight in your web site and what items would best be used as a loss-leader in a sale or packaged with other less popular items. If a popular product costs $20 and it is bundled with another $20 product and sold for $35, people will buy the bundle for the savings provided they perceive a need of some sort for the other product.
    Least Popular Items - This fact is useful for inventory control and for bundling (described above.) It is also useful for possible special sales to liquidate unpopular merchandise.
    Item Groups - Understanding item groups is very important in a retail environment. By understanding how customer's typically buy groups of products, you can redesign your display and packaging of items for sale to take advantage of this trend. For instance, if lots of people buy both Vitamin A and Vitamin C, it might make sense to bundle the two together at a small discount to move more product or at least put a hint on their respective web pages that they go great together.
    Item Popularity by season - Some items sell better in certain seasons than others. For instance, Vitamin C may sell better in winter than summer. By knowing the seasonability of the products, you will gain insight into what should be featured on your website and when.
    Item Popularity by Geographic Region - If you can find regional buying patterns in your customer base, you have a great opportunity for personalized, targeted mailings of specific products and product groups to each geographic region. Any time you can be more specific in your offering, your close percentage increases.

As you can see, each of these elements gives very valuable information that can help shape the future of this business and how it conducts itself on the web. It will dictate what new tools are needed, how data should be presented, whether or not a personal experience is justified (i.e. one that remembers you and presents itself based on your past interactions), how and when special sales should be run, what are good loss leaders, etc.

Although it can be quite a bit of work, data mining is a truly powerful way to dramatically increase your profit without incurring the cost of capturing new customers. The cost of being more responsive to an existing customer, making that customer feel welcome and selling that customer more product more often is far less costly than the cost of constantly getting new customers in a haphazard fashion.

Even applying the basic principles shared in this article, you will see a dramatic increase in your profits this coming year. And if you don't have good records, perhaps this is the time to start a system to track all this information. After all, you really don't want to be throwing all that extra money away, do you?




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Unraveling-the-Data-Mining-Mystery---The-Key-to-Dramatically-Higher-Profits&id=26665

Data Mining Social Networks, Smart Phone Data, and Other Data Base, Yet Maintaining Privacy

Is it possible to data mine social networks in such a way to does not hurt the privacy of the individual user, and if so, can we justify doing such? It wasn't too long ago the CEO of Google stated that it was important that they were able to keep data of Google searches so they can find disease, flu, and food born medical clusters. By using this data and studying the regions in the searches to help fight against outbreaks of diseases, or food borne illnesses in the distribution system. This is one good reason to store the data, and collect it for research, as long as it is anonomized, then theoretically no one is hurt.

Unfortunately, this also scares the users, because they know if the searches are indeed stored, this data can be used against them in the future, for instance, higher insurance rates, bombardment of advertising, or get them put onto some sort of future government "thought police" watch-list. Especially considering all the political correctness, and new ways of defining hate speech, bullying, and what is, what isn't, and what might be a domestically home-grown terrorist. The future concept of the thought police is very scary to most folks.

Usually if you want to collect data from a user, you have to give them something back in return, and therefore they are willing to sign away certain privacy rights on that data in trade for the use of such services; such as on their cell phone, perhaps a free iPhone app or a virtual product in an online social network.

Artificially Intelligent Search Features

It is no surprised that AI search features are getting smarter, even able to anticipate your next search question, or what you are really trying to ask, even second guessing your question for instance. Now then, let's discuss this for a moment. Many folks very much enjoy the features of Amazon.com search features, which use artificial intelligence to recommend potential other books, which they might be interested in. And therefore the user probably does not mind giving away information about itself, for this upgraded service or ability, nor would the person mind having cookies put onto their Web browser.

Nevertheless, these types of systems are always exploited for other purposes. For instance consider the Federal Trade Commission's do not call list, and consider how many corporations, political party organizations, and all of their affiliates and partners were able to bypass these rules due to the fact that the consumer or customer had bought something from them in the last six months. This is not what consumers or customers had in mind when they decided they wanted to have this "do not call list" and the resultant and response from the market place, well, it proves we cannot trust the telecommunication companies, their lobbyists, or the insiders within their group (many of which over the years have indeed been somehow connected to the intelligence agencies - AT&T - NSA Echelon for example.)

Now then, this article is in no way to be considered a conspiracy theory, it is just a known fact, yes national security does need access to such information, and often it might be relevant, catching bad guys, terrorists, spies, etc. The NSA is to protect the American People. However, when it comes to the telecommunication companies, their job is to protect shareholder's equity, maximize quarterly profits, expand their business models, and create new profit centers in their corporations.

Thus, such user data will be and has been exploited for future profits against the wishes of the consumer, without the consumer benefiting from free services for lower prices in any way. If there is an explained reason, trade-off, and a monetary consideration, the consumer might feel obliged to have additional calls bothering them while they are at home, additional advertising, and tracking of their preferences for ease of use and suggestions. What types of suggestions?

Well, there is a Starbucks two-blocks from here, turn right, then turn left and it is 200 yards, with parking available; "Sale on Frappachinos for gold-card holders today!" In this case the telecommunication company tracks your location, knows your preferences, and collects a small fee from Starbucks, and you get a free-phone, and 20% off your monthly 4G wireless fee. Is that something a consumer might want; when asked 75% of consumers or smart phone users say; yes. See that point?

In the future smart phones may have data transferred between them, rather than going through a given or closest cell tower. In other words, packets of information may go from your cell phone, to the next nearest cell phone, to another near cell phone, to the person which is intended to receive it. And the data passing through each mobile device, will not be able to read any of the information which was it is not assigned to receive as it wasn't sent to it. By using such a scheme telecommunication companies can expand their services without building more new cell towers, and therefore they can lower the price.

However, it also means that when you lay your cell phone on the table, and it is turned on it would be constantly passing data through it, data which is not yours, and you are not getting paid for that, even though you had to purchase the smart phone. But if the phone was given to you, with a large battery, so it wouldn't go dead during all those transmissions, you probably wouldn't care, as long as your data packets of information were indeed safe and no one else could read them.

This technology exists now, and is being discussed, and consider if you will that the whole strategy of networking smart cell phones or personal tech devices together is nothing new. For instance, the same strategies have been designed for satellites, and to use an analogy, this scheme is very similar to the strategies FedEx uses when it sends packages to the next nearest FedEx office if that is their destination, without sending all of the packages all the way across the country to the central Memphis sort, and then all the way back again. They are saving time, fuel, space, and energy, and if cell phones did this it would save the telecommunication companies mega bucks in the savings of building new cell towers.

As long as you got a free cell phone, which many of us do, unless we have the mega top of the line edition, and if they gave you a long-lasting free battery it is win-win for the user. You probably wouldn't care, and the telecommunication companies could most likely lower the cost of services, and not need to upgrade their system, because they can carry a lot more data, without hundreds of billions of dollars in future investments.

Also a net centric system like this is safer to disruption in the event of an emergency, when emergency communications systems take precedence, putting every cell phone user as secondary traffic at the cell towers, which means their calls may not even get through.

Next, the last thing the telecommunication company would want to do is to data mine that data, or those packets of information from people like a soccer mom calling her son waiting at the bus stop at school. And anyone with a cell phone certainly wouldn't want their packets of information being stolen from them and rerouted because someone near them hacked into the system and had a cell phone that was displaying all of their information.

You can see the problems with all this, but you can also see the incredible economies of scale by making each and every cell phone a transmitter and receiver, which it already is in principle anyway, at least now for all data you send and receive. In the new system, if all the data which is closest by is able to transfer through it, and send that data on its way. The receiving cell phone would wait for all the packets of data were in, and then display the information.

You can see why such a system also might cause people to have a problem with it because of what they call net neutrality. If someone was downloading a movie onto their iPad using a 3G or 4G wireless network, it could tie up all the cell phones nearby that were moving the data through them. In this case, it might upset consumers, but if that traffic could be somewhat delayed by priority based on an AI algorithm decision matrix, something simple, then such a tactic for packet distribution plan might allow for this to occur without disruption from the actual cell tower, meaning everyone would be better off. Therefore we all get information flow faster, more dispersed, and therefore safer from intruders. Please consider all this.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Social-Networks,-Smart-Phone-Data,-and-Other-Data-Base,-Yet-Maintaining-Privacy&id=4867112

Business Uses For Data Mining

When used wisely within Customer Relationship Management applications data mining can significantly improve the bottom line. It will end the process of randomly contacting a prospective or current customer through a call centre or by mailshot. With the effective use of data mining a company can concentrate its efforts on targeting prospects that have a high likelihood of being open to an offer. This in turn gives the ability for more sophisticated methods to be used such as campaigns being optimised to individuals.

Businesses that employ data mining techniques will usually see a high return on investment, but will also find that the number of predictive models can quickly increase. Rather than just implementing one model to predict which customers will respond positively, a business could build a different models for each region and customer type. Then instead of sending an offer to all prospects it may only want to send to prospects that have a high chance of taking up the offer. It may also want to determine which customers are going to be profitable during a certain time frame and direct their efforts towards them. To be able to maintain this quantity and quality of models, these model versions have to be well managed and automated data mining implemented.

Human Resources departments can also make a valid case for using data mining. It will allow them to in identifying the characteristics of their most successful employees. Information gained from such as resource can help HR focus their recruiting efforts accordingly.

Another example of data mining, is that used in retail. Often called market basket analysis, it is, for example, when a store records the purchases of customers, it could identify those customers who favour silk shirts over cotton ones; or customers who bought certain grocery items would also also buy the same specific item as well. This is often highlighted in on-line stores when you are told that so many people who bought a certain book or CD also bought XX as well.

Although some explanations of relationships may be difficult, taking advantage of it is easier. The example deals with association rules within transaction-based data. Not all data are transaction based and logical or inexact rules may also be present within a database. In a manufacturing application, an inexact rule may state that 73% of products which have a specific defect or problem will develop a secondary problem within the next six months.

Mike has more than 15 years of experience designing and implementing data warehouses based on Oracle, MS SQL Server, MySql, PostgreSQL and more.
He is currently working for DB Software Laboratory



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Business-Uses-For-Data-Mining&id=2877159

Data Mining, Not Just a Method But a Technique

Web data mining is segregating probable clients out of huge information available on the Internet by performing various searches. It could be well organized and structured, or raw, depending on the use of the data. Web data mining could be done using a simple database program or investing money in a costly program.

Start collecting basic contact information of probable clients, such as: names, addresses, landline and cell phone numbers, email addresses and education or occupation if required.

CART and CHAID data mining

While collecting data you will find that tree-shaped structures that represent decisions. These derived decisions give rules for the classification of data collected. Precise decision tree methods include Classification and Regression Trees also know as CART data mining and Chi Square Automatic Interaction Detection also known as CHAID data mining. CART and CHAID data mining are decision tree techniques used for classification of data collected. They provide a set of rules that could be applied to unclassified data collected in prediction. CART segments a dataset creating two-way splits whereas CHAID segments using chi square tests creating multi-way splits. CART requires less data preparation compared to CHAID.

Understanding customer's actions

Keep a track of customer's actions like: what does he buy, when does he buy, why does he buy, what is the use of his buying, etc. Knowing such simple things about your customer will help you to understand needs of your customer better and thus process of data mining services will be easier and quality data would be mined. This will increase your personal relations with your customer which would finally result in a better professional relationship.

Following demography

Mine the data as per demography, dependent on geography as well as socio economic background of business location. You can use government statistics as the source of your data collection. Keeping it in mind you can go ahead with the understanding of the community existing and thus the data required.

Use your informal conversation in serving your clients better

Use minute details of your conversation and understanding with your customers to serve them. If essential, conduct surveys, send a professional gift or use some other object that helps you understand better in fulfilling customer needs. This will increase the bonding between you and your customer and you will be able to serve your customer better in providing data mining services.

Insert the collect information in a desktop database. More the information is collected you will find that you can prepare specific templates in feeding information. Using a desktop database, it is easier to make changes later on as and when required.

Maintaining privacy

While performing, it is essential to ensure that you or your team members are not violating privacy laws in gathering or providing the data information. Once trust is lost, you may also loose the customer, because trust is the base of any relationship, let it be a business relation.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining,-Not-Just-a-Method-But-a-Technique&id=5416129

Data Mining and Its Impact on Business

Today, businesses are collecting more information that is available in a variety of formats. This includes: operational data, sales reports, customer data, inventory lists, forecast data, etc. In order to effectively manage and grow the business, all of the data gathered requires effective management and analysis. One such way of controlling the vast amount of information flow is a process called Data Mining.

Data mining is the process of taking a large amount of data and analyzing it from a variety of angles and putting into a format that makes it useful information to help a business improve operations, reduce costs, boost revenue, and make better business decisions. Today, effective data mining software has developed to help a business to collect and analyze useful information.

This process allows a business to collect data from a variety of sources, analyze the data using software, load the information into a database, store the information, and provide analyzed data in a useful format such as a report, table, or graph. As it relates to business analysis and business forecasting, the information analyzed is classified to determine important patterns and relationships. The idea is to identify relationships, patterns, and correlations from a broad number of different angles from a large database. These kinds of software and techniques allow a business easy access to a much simpler process which makes it more lucrative.

Data mining works allows a company to use the information to maintain competitiveness in a highly competitive business world. For instance, a company may be collecting a large volume of information from various regions of the country such as a consumer national survey. The software can compile the mined data, categorize it, and analyze it, to reveal a host of useful information that a marketer can use for marketing strategies. The outcome of the process should be an effective business analysis that allows a company to fully understand the information in order to make accurate business decisions that contributes to the success of the business. An example of a very effective use of data mining is acquiring a large amount of grocery store scanner data and analyzing it for market research. Data mining software allows for statistical analysis, data processing, and categorization, which all helps achieve accurate results.

It is mostly used by businesses with a strong emphasis on consumer information such shopping habits, financial analysis, marketing assessments...etc. It allows a business to determine key factors such as demographics, product positioning, competition, pricing, customer satisfaction, sales, and business expenditures. The result is the business is able to streamline its operations, develop effective marketing plans, and generate more sales. The overall impact is an increase in revenue and increased profitability.

For retailers, this process allows them to use of sales transactions to develop targeted marketing campaigns based on their customers shopping habits. Today, mining applications and software are available on all system sizes and platforms. For instance, the more information that has to be gathered and processed, the bigger the database. As well, the type of software a business will use depends on how complicated the data mining project. The more multifaceted the queries and the more queries performed, the more powerful system will be needed.

When a business harnesses the power of this system, they are able to gain important knowledge that will help them not only develop effective marketing strategies leading to better business decisions, but it will help identify future trends in their particular industry. Data mining has become an essential tool to help businesses gain a competitive edge.

Managing your organization well is critical - by using data mining software and being on top of performance management systems, you can ensure that your organization's information technology is up to par!



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-and-Its-Impact-on-Business&id=4528755

Facts on Data Mining

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Data Entry Services in India Are Getting Famous in the World!

Outsourcing has become the most profitable business in the world. This business is growing in India and other part of the world. These services are getting famous in the world and most of the business owners are saving their lots of money by doing outsourcing to different countries where India comes in top in the outsourcing. By outsourcing your offline and online information entry jobs, your company will maintain properly organized and up-to-date records of the employees and other important stuff. These jobs are usually done in the home environment.

India is very popular in providing the BPO services for their customers. There is large scale of BPO service providers running their business in India. The employees working in these offices are also very competent and trained. Data entry services in India is very popular all around the world because of having the access of BPO experts and the web data extraction experts.

What these BPO services provide you?

There are many business across the globe running on the outsource services, BPO services in India provides the ease of life to the business owner want quick and fast data entry work.

There are many well reputed firms working in India and doing their best to finish and deliver comes punctually. They're professional well equipped with the newest technology and software and more importantly with the professional labor work. They are fully trained and expert in their niche so if a business owner take the services then they get the in time work and quality. When you will select any BPO expert then you will find the following data entry expertise in these professional companies.

1. You will find the handwritten material with the help of experts.
2. Knowledge entry of e-books, directories, image files and etc.
3. You will also get the best services of data processing.
4. Business card knowledge entry
5. Bills and survey services which will help you to Maintain and correct records.
6. Alpha numeric data entry services
7. Data entry free trails.

Thousand of online BPO jobs are also available on the Indian big job portals and other data entry work. These services and work force reduce your workload and will enhance your productivity of your business. Outsourcing the right choice by any business owner because it reduces your total cost and you get the perfect and reliable work. When you approach to any professional service provider firm in India then it reduce the turnaround time and you get the professional data entry services.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Entry-Services-in-India-Are-Getting-Famous-in-the-World!&id=4708858

Data Processing Services - Different Types of Data Processing

Data processing services- To get proper information in specific and require data format and process your data which can be understand by people.

In the most of BPO (business process outsourcing) companies, converting your data (information) into right data format which is known as data processing services and also a very important part of the BPO company. There are many types of data process are available in the BPO industry such as check processing, insurance claim process, forms process, image process, survey processing and other business process services.

There is some important data processing services which can help to the business described as below:

Check-Processing: In any business, check processing is essential requirements to make easy online transactions. It will increase and make fast your business process.

Insurance-Claim-Processing: Sometime it is very complicated to handle. An insurance claim is an official request submitted to the insurance company demanding payment as per the terms of the policy. The terms of the insurance contract dictate the insurance claim amount.

Form-Processing: In the business, there are some important forms are used to process properly and receive accurate data or information. It is one of very crucial data online processing service.

Image-Processing: In electrical engineering and computer science, capturing and manipulating images to enhance or extract information. Image processing functions include resizing, sharpening, brightness, and contrast.

Survey-Processing: To make quick decision and want to market research, survey form is very much helpful in take proper decision or any important action.

Thus, these all important data process and conversion services can help any business to grow their profit and make business process very easy to access.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Processing-Services---Different-Types-of-Data-Processing&id=3874740