Data Mining Services

You will get all solutions regarding data mining from many companies in India. You can consult a variety of companies for data mining services and considering the variety is beneficial to customers. These companies also offer web research services which will help companies to perform critical business activities.

Very competitive prices for commodities will be the results where there is competition among qualified players in the data mining, data collection services and other computer-based services. Every company willing to cut down their costs regarding outsourcing data mining services and BPO data mining services will benefit from the companies offering data mining services in India. In addition, web research services are being sourced from the companies.

Outsourcing is a great way to reduce costs regarding labor, and companies in India will benefit from companies in India as well as from outside the country. The most famous aspect of outsourcing is data entry. Preference of outsourcing services from offshore countries has been a practice by companies to reduce costs, and therefore, it is not a wonder getting outsource data mining to India.

For companies which are seeking for outsourcing services such as outsource web data extraction, it is good to consider a variety of companies. The comparison will help them get best quality of service and businesses will grow rapidly in regard to the opportunities provided by the outsourcing companies. Outsourcing does not only provide opportunities for companies to reduce costs but to get labor where countries are experiencing shortage.

Outsourcing presents good and fast communication opportunity to companies. People will be communicating at the most convenient time they have to get the job done. The company is able to gather dedicated resources and team to accomplish their purpose. Outsourcing is a good way of getting a good job because the company will look for the best workforce. In addition, the competition for the outsourcing provides a rich ground to get the best providers.

In order to retain the job, providers will need to perform very well. The company will be getting high quality services even in regard to the price they are offering. In fact, it is possible to get people to work on your projects. Companies are able to get work done with the shortest time possible. For instance, where there is a lot of work to be done, companies may post the projects onto the websites and the projects will get people to work on them. The time factor comes in where the company will not have to wait if it wants the projects completed immediately.

Outsourcing has been effective in cutting labor costs because companies will not have to pay the extra amount required to retain employees such as the allowances relating to travels, as well as housing and health. These responsibilities are met by the companies that employ people on a permanent basis. The opportunity presented by the outsourcing of data and services is comfort among many other things because these jobs can be completed at home. This is the reason why the jobs will be preferred more in the future.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-Services&id=4733707

How To Make The Most of Your Data

Effective use of data mining tools require a great interface. No matter what data mining system you use, you'll need to work through an interface to get the information you need. In choosing a data mining tool, the reliability, ease of use and flexibility of data outputs should be key components in your decision. Essentially, you're in need of a business intelligence solution that includes data mining tools for accurate output of data in an easy-to-understand format. Understanding what data mining is will help you decide if its necessary for your business.

Data mining is the process of extracting patterns from large data sets by combining methods of statistics and "if then, then that" artificial intelligence with a database. So, firstly, if you have large databases, in multiple places, and you need to be able to sift through that data to find relevant information for your day to day operation, then yes, you need a data mining tool.

Data mining tools are typically found within business intelligence software but require some intrinsic customization to make the data sorting applicable to your unique work environment. For example, many large police departments have opted to use business intelligence solutions simply because they have massive amounts of data to sort through during any given day. Those sources of data can be from related government agencies for child welfare or fraud benefits crime cases. In addition, that data could also come from historical history of activities in a local area, records of attendees to those events, crimes based out of those events and so on. Imagine the multitude of data to sort through in order to make a judgment on which direction to investigate to solve a single crime. It's virtually impossible without the use of data mining technology.

Data mining tools to have the capability to handle all types of input and output data such as text, video feed, sound feed, email, text messages, other computer systems, and your website. Depending on your needs and your company operations, you have to determine what data will come into the tool and how the information will be crunched, sorted, filter and how it will be presented. In addition, serious consideration must be in place to prevent erroneous data. Bad data in is bad data out. For example, validity checks such as 10 digit phone numbers and birth years are within a certain reasonable range are verified before being accepted into the data system. Once the data has been verified and crunched via the data mining tool according to your specifications, the business intelligence software will help determine how that data is represented. Without being able to understand data, it holds no value to the consumer. Therefore, visual representation of data is a modern approach to the old fashioned, lines of excel spreadsheets.

Data can be mapped, graphed or superimposed over a supporting image. Back to the example for law enforcement officers. A map of past crimes that occurred during daylight hours can be superimposed over a map of crimes that occurred at night. For any officer, who is not experienced in any data mining techniques, would immediately be able to see if the same type crimes travel depending on day or night. In addition, visually predicted areas of crime based on data analysis from the business intelligence software would highlight where additional resources are needed to deter crime before it even happens. For small to large police departments, this availability of data crunched down into usable information is what takes the guess work out crime fighting.

Carefully consider how much time, personnel and cost is involved in sorting through relevant and irrelevant data in order to get the information that is valuable for your organization. If you're still doing things the old fashioned way of gut feeling and simple spreadsheets, you might want to consider upgrading your technology to a business intelligence solution suite. Even though the initial investment might be somewhat costly, the long term advantages include faster and better data results that can take the guesswork out of day to day operations.

Beyond Insight Inc [http://www.beyondinsightinc.com] is a business intelligence solutions company that is dedicated to truly empowering organizations of any size with capabilities and tools to perform optimally. By leveraging comprehensive and powerful business intelligence solutions, Beyond Insight Inc provides the perfect blend of people, processes and technology.


Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?How-To-Make-The-Most-of-Your-Data&id=6198886

Pushing Bad Data- Google's Latest Black Eye

Google stopped counting, or at least publicly displaying, the number of pages it indexed in September of 05, after a school-yard "measuring contest" with rival Yahoo. That count topped out around 8 billion pages before it was removed from the homepage. News broke recently through various SEO forums that Google had suddenly, over the past few weeks, added another few billion pages to the index. This might sound like a reason for celebration, but this "accomplishment" would not reflect well on the search engine that achieved it.

What had the SEO community buzzing was the nature of the fresh, new few billion pages. They were blatant spam- containing Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads, scraped content, and they were, in many cases, showing up well in the search results. They pushed out far older, more established sites in doing so. A Google representative responded via forums to the issue by calling it a "bad data push," something that met with various groans throughout the SEO community.

How did someone manage to dupe Google into indexing so many pages of spam in such a short period of time? I'll provide a high level overview of the process, but don't get too excited. Like a diagram of a nuclear explosive isn't going to teach you how to make the real thing, you're not going to be able to run off and do it yourself after reading this article. Yet it makes for an interesting tale, one that illustrates the ugly problems cropping up with ever increasing frequency in the world's most popular search engine.

A Dark and Stormy Night

Our story begins deep in the heart of Moldva, sandwiched scenically between Romania and the Ukraine. In between fending off local vampire attacks, an enterprising local had a brilliant idea and ran with it, presumably away from the vampires... His idea was to exploit how Google handled subdomains, and not just a little bit, but in a big way.

The heart of the issue is that currently, Google treats subdomains much the same way as it treats full domains- as unique entities. This means it will add the homepage of a subdomain to the index and return at some point later to do a "deep crawl." Deep crawls are simply the spider following links from the domain's homepage deeper into the site until it finds everything or gives up and comes back later for more.

Briefly, a subdomain is a "third-level domain." You've probably seen them before, they look something like this: subdomain.domain.com. Wikipedia, for instance, uses them for languages; the English version is "en.wikipedia.org", the Dutch version is "nl.wikipedia.org." Subdomains are one way to organize large sites, as opposed to multiple directories or even separate domain names altogether.

So, we have a kind of page Google will index virtually "no questions asked." It's a wonder no one exploited this situation sooner. Some commentators believe the reason for that may be this "quirk" was introduced after the recent "Big Daddy" update. Our Eastern European friend got together some servers, content scrapers, spambots, PPC accounts, and some all-important, very inspired scripts, and mixed them all together thusly...

Five Billion Served- And Counting...

First, our hero here crafted scripts for his servers that would, when GoogleBot dropped by, start generating an essentially endless number of subdomains, all with a single page containing keyword-rich scraped content, keyworded links, and PPC ads for those keywords. Spambots are sent out to put GoogleBot on the scent via referral and comment spam to tens of thousands of blogs around the world. The spambots provide the broad setup, and it doesn't take much to get the dominos to fall.

GoogleBot finds the spammed links and, as is its purpose in life, follows them into the network. Once GoogleBot is sent into the web, the scripts running the servers simply keep generating pages- page after page, all with a unique subdomain, all with keywords, scraped content, and PPC ads. These pages get indexed and suddenly you've got yourself a Google index 3-5 billion pages heavier in under 3 weeks.

Reports indicate, at first, the PPC ads on these pages were from Adsense, Google's own PPC service. The ultimate irony then is Google benefits financially from all the impressions being charged to AdSense users as they appear across these billions of spam pages. The AdSense revenues from this endeavor were the point, after all. Cram in so many pages that, by sheer force of numbers, people would find and click on the ads in those pages, making the spammer a nice profit in a very short amount of time.

Billions or Millions? What is Broken?

Word of this achievement spread like wildfire from the DigitalPoint forums. It spread like wildfire in the SEO community, to be specific. The "general public" is, as of yet, out of the loop, and will probably remain so. A response by a Google engineer appeared on a Threadwatch thread about the topic, calling it a "bad data push". Basically, the company line was they have not, in fact, added 5 billions pages. Later claims include assurances the issue will be fixed algorithmically. Those following the situation (by tracking the known domains the spammer was using) see only that Google is removing them from the index manually.

The tracking is accomplished using the "site:" command. A command that, theoretically, displays the total number of indexed pages from the site you specify after the colon. Google has already admitted there are problems with this command, and "5 billion pages", they seem to be claiming, is merely another symptom of it. These problems extend beyond merely the site: command, but the display of the number of results for many queries, which some feel are highly inaccurate and in some cases fluctuate wildly. Google admits they have indexed some of these spammy subdomains, but so far haven't provided any alternate numbers to dispute the 3-5 billion showed initially via the site: command.

Over the past week the number of the spammy domains & subdomains indexed has steadily dwindled as Google personnel remove the listings manually. There's been no official statement that the "loophole" is closed. This poses the obvious problem that, since the way has been shown, there will be a number of copycats rushing to cash in before the algorithm is changed to deal with it.

Conclusions

There are, at minimum, two things broken here. The site: command and the obscure, tiny bit of the algorithm that allowed billions (or at least millions) of spam subdomains into the index. Google's current priority should probably be to close the loophole before they're buried in copycat spammers. The issues surrounding the use or misuse of AdSense are just as troubling for those who might be seeing little return on their adverting budget this month.

Do we "keep the faith" in Google in the face of these events? Most likely, yes. It is not so much whether they deserve that faith, but that most people will never know this happened. Days after the story broke there's still very little mention in the "mainstream" press. Some tech sites have mentioned it, but this isn't the kind of story that will end up on the evening news, mostly because the background knowledge required to understand it goes beyond what the average citizen is able to muster. The story will probably end up as an interesting footnote in that most esoteric and neoteric of worlds, "SEO History."



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Pushing-Bad-Data--Googles-Latest-Black-Eye&id=226954

Data Mining - Techniques and Process of Data Mining

Data mining as the name suggest is extracting informative data from a huge source of information. It is like segregating a drop from the ocean. Here a drop is the most important information essential for your business, and the ocean is the huge database built up by you.

Recognized in Business

Businesses have become too creative, by coming up with new patterns and trends and of behavior through data mining techniques or automated statistical analysis. Once the desired information is found from the huge database it could be used for various applications. If you want to get involved into other functions of your business you should take help of professional data mining services available in the industry

Data Collection

Data collection is the first step required towards a constructive data-mining program. Almost all businesses require collecting data. It is the process of finding important data essential for your business, filtering and preparing it for a data mining outsourcing process. For those who are already have experience to track customer data in a database management system, have probably achieved their destination.

Algorithm selection

You may select one or more data mining algorithms to resolve your problem. You already have database. You may experiment using several techniques. Your selection of algorithm depends upon the problem that you are want to resolve, the data collected, as well as the tools you possess.

Regression Technique

The most well-know and the oldest statistical technique utilized for data mining is regression. Using a numerical dataset, it then further develops a mathematical formula applicable to the data. Here taking your new data use it into existing mathematical formula developed by you and you will get a prediction of future behavior. Now knowing the use is not enough. You will have to learn about its limitations associated with it. This technique works best with continuous quantitative data as age, speed or weight. While working on categorical data as gender, name or color, where order is not significant it better to use another suitable technique.

Classification Technique

There is another technique, called classification analysis technique which is suitable for both, categorical data as well as a mix of categorical and numeric data. Compared to regression technique, classification technique can process a broader range of data, and therefore is popular. Here one can easily interpret output. Here you will get a decision tree requiring a series of binary decisions.

Our best wishes are with you for your endeavors.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining---Techniques-and-Process-of-Data-Mining&id=5302867

Online Data Entry and Data Mining Services

Data entry job involves transcribing a particular type of data into some other form. It can be either online or offline. The input data may include printed documents like Application forms, survey forms, registration forms, handwritten documents etc.

Data entry process is an inevitable part of the job to any organization. One way or other each organization demands data entry. Data entry skills vary depends upon the nature of the job requirement, in some cases data to be entered from a hard copy formats and in some other cases data to be entered directly into a web portal. Online data entry job generally requires the data to be entered in to any online data base.

For a super market, data associate might be required to enter the goods which have sold in a particular day and the new goods received in a particular day to maintain the stock well in order. Also, by doing this the concerned authorities will get an idea about the sale particulars of each commodity as they requires. In another example, an office the account executive might be required to input the day to day expenses in to the online accounting database in order to keep the account well in order.

The aim of the data mining process is to collect the information from reliable online sources as per the requirement of the customer and convert it to a structured format for the further use. The major source of data mining is any of the internet search engine like Google, Yahoo, Bing, AOL, MSN etc. Many search engines such as Google and Bing provide customized results based on the user's activity history. Based on our keyword search, the search engine lists the details of the websites from where we can gather the details as per our requirement.

Collect the data from the online sources such as Company Name, Contact Person, Profile of the Company, Contact Phone Number of Email ID Etc. are doing for the marketing activities. Once the data is gathered from the online sources into a structured format, the marketing authorities will start their marketing promotions by calling or emailing the concerned persons, which may result to create a new customer. So basically data mining is playing a vital role in today's business expansions. By outsourcing the data entry and its related works, you can save the cost that would be incurred in setting up the necessary infrastructure and employee cost.


Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Online-Data-Entry-and-Data-Mining-Services&id=7713395

Data Entry Services has Tremendous Potential

Running a business is not a very difficult thing to do, but running it successfully surely needs some tremendous efforts on your part. There are many things that need to be handled properly for a business to be successful. Data entry is one of the vital elements for running a business successfully. Data entry is small but nonetheless very significant aspect of a business which one needs to take care of. Outsourcing is a business process which is increasingly being used by businesses to take care of the data entry aspect. In fact the process of outsourcing has made things simpler for business owners.

Data entry services are provided by several companies who are involved in outsourcing work. Such companies specialize in providing different types of services including data entry services to companies that are looking for professional support to unburden from the heavy workload that they have. For the smooth running and proper management of any type of business getting data entry done in a proper manner is crucial. So if you own a business and want to manage it properly you must opt for hiring data entry services for your business.

Each business is different and the business needs also differ vastly. So depending on the type of business which you run you can hire data entry services accordingly. You may need data entry services of different types like offline or online data entry, insurance claim entry, banking information entry and building up a huge database with various other types of entry. The demand for data entry is increasing gradually day by day and in present time it has turned out to be very lucrative as well.

Always hire data entry services from outsourcing companies that provide you with services of extremely talented professionals. You are spending huge amount of money and for no reason must you settle for anything less. Talking with someone who has already used such services help a great deal as they can tell you exactly what the advantages and disadvantages are of using the data entry service. You can get customized services for small, mid size and large scaled business from the companies which provide data entry services. Data entry is not a complicated application but it is extremely time consuming and this is one of the major reasons why a business must undertake data entry services.

Each business has different things to take care of and they cannot afford to waste such valuable time in data entry work. Professionals that work for data entry are specially trained to suit the requirements of particular businesses. So you do not have to worry if the company which is providing data entry services will be able to do the work as per your needs or not. You can just hire data entry services and rest easy, all your work will be done efficiently by the professionals working there.

Data entry services has received tremendous boost and this is one aspect of business which is there to stay for a long time. So hiring data entry services for your business will be just perfect.


Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Entry-Services-has-Tremendous-Potential&id=472028

How to Scrape and Crawl Data from Websites Like Amazon.com and EBay

Say you have an e-commerce site like E-Bay or Amazon, and you sell multiple products that you get from other vendors; you have to rely on all these vendors to provide you with the product details about all items available through your site. There are a couple time consuming ways to do this.

First, you can rely on the outside vendors to provide you with the pertinent information to implement piece by piece on your own site (called product feeds), or you can visit each vendor’s site and cut and paste from the specific web pages where the product is located.

Either of these options are a lot of work, but this information is crucial to the user who might end up buying the product. The point is, you need this information to optimize your sales, so why not do it the easy way?

Let Optimum7 provide data scraping for you. We can use techniques that will simply extract information from the web and provide information feeds for each of your products, without the need for laborious, time consuming  ‘cut and paste’ or text implementation chores.

Web scraping or data crawling will search web content over the internet in a way that simulates human exploration, except that is an automated way of harvesting content. It will then bring the pertinent information back to you as structured data that you can store in a database or on a spreadsheet, and you will be able to analyze it later.

You can use this for information for online price comparisons, product information, web content Mashup, web research and web integration. We can even perform screen scraping for you for visual data to use with your products. Therefore, you can greatly enhance your online business, not only in terms of content/information feeds, but you will have all sorts of analytical data at your disposal.  The information can be stored and referenced to help you make sound business decision about the management and development of your e-business.

Web crawling is similar in that it uses a sophisticated computer program that “crawls through” the World Wide Web in a methodical, systematic, automated way. These programs are sometimes referred to as spiders, ants, or web robots. They are commonly employed by search engines to provide the most relevant, up to date information.

You can use web crawling to provide automatic maintenance on your site because it can be tasked to routinely check all your links and validate your HTML code, to make sure all the underlying features on your site that users depend on are still working. It will also make a copy of all the pages it visits, usually beginning with a list of targeted URLs (called seeds) that you have amassed in your database from the previous visitors to your site. Therefore web crawling is a useful tool to help you grow your online business.

Optimum7 can take care of both web scraping and web crawling for you. Give us a call today to see how these functions can make your online business run smoother.



Source: http://www.optimum7.com/internet-marketing/ecommerce/how-to-scrape-and-crawl-data-from-websites-like-amazon-com-and-ebay.html

Data Mining and the Tough Personal Information Privacy Sell Considered

Everyone come on in and have a seat, we will be starting this discussion a little behind schedule due to the fact we have a full-house here today. If anyone has a spare seat next to them, will you please raise your hands, we need to get some of these folks in back a seat. The reservations are sold out, but there should be a seat for everyone at today's discussion.

Okay everyone, I thank you and thanks for that great introduction, I just hope I can live up to all those verbal accolades.

Oh boy, not another controversial subject! Yes, well, surely you know me better than that by now, you've come to expect it. Okay so, today's topic is one about the data mining of; Internet Traffic, Online Searches, Smart Phone Data, and basically, storing all the personal data about your whole life. I know, you don't like this idea do you - or maybe you participate online in social online networks and most of your data is already there, and you've been loading up your blog with all sorts of information?

Now then, contemporary theory and real world observation of the virtual world predicts that for a fee, or for a trade in free services, products, discounts, or a chance to play in social online networks, employment opportunity leads, or the prospects of future business you and nearly everyone will give up some personal information.

So, once this data is collected, who will have access to it, who will use it, and how will they use it? All great questions, but first how can the collection of this data be sold to the users, and agreed upon in advance? Well, this can at times be very challenging; yes, very tough sell, well human psychology online suggests that if we give benefits people will trade away any given data of privacy.

Hold That Thought.

Let's digress a second, and have a reality check dialogue, and will come back to that point above soon enough, okay - okay agreed then.

The information online is important, and it is needed at various national security levels, this use of data is legitimate and worthy information can be gained in that regard. For instance, many Russian Spies were caught in the US using social online networks to recruit, make business contacts, and study the situation, makes perfect sense doesn't it? Okay so, that particular episode is either; an excuse to gather this data and analyze it, or it is a warning that we had better. Either way, it's a done deal, next topic.

And, there is the issue with foreign spies using the data to hurt American businesses, or American interests, or even to undermine the government, and we must understand that spies in the United States come from over 70 other nations. And let's not dismiss the home team challenge. What's that you ask? Well, we have a huge intelligence industrial complex and those who work in and around the spy business, often freelance on the side for Wall Street, corporations, or other interests. They have access to information, thus all that data mined data is at their disposal.

Is this a condemnation of sorts; No! I am merely stating facts and realities behind the curtain of created realities of course, without judgment, but this must be taken into consideration when we ask; who can we trust with all this information once it is collected, stored, and in a format which can be sorted? So, we need a way to protect this data for the appropriate sources and needs, without allowing it to be compromised - this must be our first order of business.

Let's Undigress and Go Back to the Original Topic at hand, shall we? Okay, deal.

Now then, what about large corporate collecting information; Proctor and Gamble, Ford, GM, Amazon, etc? They will certainly be buying this data from social networks, and in many cases you've already given up your rights to privacy merely by participating. Of course, all the data will help these companies refine their sorts using your preferences, thus, the products or services they pitch you will be highly targeted to your exact desires, needs, and demographics, which is a lot better than the current bombardment of Viagra Ads with disgusting titles, now in your inbox, deleted junk files.

Look, here is the deal...if we are going to collect data online, through social networks, and store all that the data, then we also need an excuse to collect the data first place, or the other option is not tell the public and collect it anyway, which we already probably realize that is now being done in some form or fashion. But let's for the sake of arguments say it isn't, then should we tell the public we are doing, or are going to do this. Yes, however if we do not tell the public they will eventually figure it out, and conspiracy theories will run rampant.

We already know this will occur because it has occurred in the past. Some say that when any data is collected from any individual, group, company, or agency, that all those involved should also be warned on all the collection of data, as it is being collected and by whom. Including the NSA, a government, or a Corporation which intends on using this data to either sell you more products, or for later use by their artificial intelligence data scanning tools.

Likewise, the user should be notified when cookies are being used in Internet searchers, and what benefits they will get, for instance; search features to help bring about more relevant information to you, which might be to your liking. Such as Amazon.com which tracks customer inquiries and brings back additional relevant results, most online shopping eCommerce sites do this, and there was a very nice expose on this in the Wall Street Journal recently.

Another digression if you will, and this one is to ask a pertinent question; If the government or a company collects the information, the user ought to know why, and who will be given access to this information in the future, so let's talk about that shall we? I thought you might like this side topic, good for you, it shows you also care about these things.

And as to that question, one theory is to use a system that allows certain trusted sources in government, or corporations which you do business with to see some data, then they won't be able to look without being seen, and therefore you will know which government agencies, and which corporations are looking at your data, and therefore there will be transparency, and there would have to be at that point justification for doing so. Or most likely folks would have a fit and then, a proverbial field day with the intrusion in the media.

Now then, one recent report from the government asks the dubious question; "How do we define the purpose for which the data will be used?"

Ah ha, another great question in this on-going saga indeed. It almost sounds as if they too were one of my concerned audience members, or even a colleague. Okay so, it is important not only to define the purpose of the data collection, but also to justify it, and it better be good. Hey, I see you are all smiling now. Good, because, it's going to get a bit more serious on some of my next points here.

Okay, and yes this brings about many challenges, and it is also important to note that there will be, ALWAYS more outlets for the data, which is collected, as time goes on. Therefore the consumer, investor, or citizen who allows their data to be compromised, stored for later use for important issues such as national security, or for corporations to help the consumer (in this case you) in their purchasing decisions, or for that company's planning for inventory, labor, or future marketing (most likely; again to whom; ha ha ha, yes you are catching on; You.

Thus, shouldn't you be involved at every step of the way; Ah, a resounding YES! I see from our audience today, and yes, I would have expected nothing less from you either. And as all this process takes place, eventually "YOU" are going to figure out that this data is out of control, and ends up everywhere. So, should you give away data easily?

No, and if it is that valuable, hold out for more. And then, you will be rewarded for the data, which is yours, that will be used on your behalf and potentially against you in some way in the future; even if it is only for additional marketing impressions on the websites you visit or as you walk down the hallway at the mall;

"Let's see a show of hands; who has seen Minority Report? Ah, most of you, indeed, if you haven't go see, it and you will understand what we are all saying up here, and others are saying in the various panel discussions this weekend."

Now you probably know this, but the very people who are working hard to protect your data are in fact the biggest purveyors of your information, that's right our government. And don't get me wrong, I am not anti-government, just want to keep it responsible, as much is humanly possible. Consider if you will all the data you give to the government and how much of that public record is available to everyone else;

    Tax forms to the IRS,
    Marriage licenses,
    Voting Registration,
    Selective Services Card,
    Property Taxes,
    Business Licenses,
    Etc.

The list is pretty long, and the more you do, the more information they have, and that means the more information is available; everywhere, about who; "YOU! That's who!" Good I am glad we are all clear on that one. Yes, indeed, all sorts of things, all this information is available at the county records office, through the IRS, or with various branches of OUR government. This is one reason we should all take notice to the future of privacy issues. Often out government, but it could be any first world government, claims it is protecting your privacy, but it has been the biggest purveyors of giving away our personal and private data throughout American history. Thus, there will a little bit of a problem with consumers, taxpayers, or citizens if they no longer trust the government for giving away such things as;

    Date of birth,
    Social Security number,
    Driver's license,
    Driving record,
    Taxable information,
    Etc., on and on.

And let's not kid ourselves here all this data is available on anyone, it's all on the web, much of it can be gotten free, some costs a little, never very much, and believe me there is a treasure trove of data on each one of us online. And that's before we look into all the other information being collected now.

Now then, here is one solution for the digital data realm, including smart phone communication data, perhaps we can control and monitor the packet flow of information, whereby all packets of info is tagged, and those looking at the data will also be tagged, with no exceptions. Therefore if someone in a government bureaucracy is looking at something they shouldn't be looking at, they will also be tagged as a person looking for the data.

Remember the big to do about someone going through Joe The Plumber's records in OH, or someone trying to release sealed documents on President Bush's DUI when he was in his 20s, or the fit of rage by Sara Palin when someone hacked her Yahoo Mail Account, or when someone at a Hawaii Hospital was rummaging through Barak Obama's certificate of showing up at the hospital as a baby, with mother in tow?

We need to know who is looking at the data, and their reason better be good, the person giving the data has a right-to-know. Just like the "right-to-know" laws at companies, if there are hazardous chemicals on the property. Let me speak on another point; Border Security. You see, we need to know both what is coming and going if we are to have secure borders.

You see, one thing they found with our border security is it is very important not only what comes over the border, which we do need to monitor, but it's also important to see what goes back over the border the other way. This is how authorities have been able to catch drug runners, because they're able to catch the underground economy and cash moving back to Mexico, and in holding those individuals, to find out whom they work for - just like border traffic - our information goes both ways, if we can monitor for both those ways, it keeps you happier, and our data safer.

Another question is; "How do we know the purpose for data being collected, and how can the consumer or citizen be sure that mass data releases will not occur, it's occurred in almost every agency, and usually the citizens are warned that their data was released or that the data base containing their information was breached, but that's after the fact, and it just proves that data is like water, and it's hard to contain. Information wants to be free, and it will always find a way to leak out, especially when it's in the midst of humans.

Okay, I see my time is running short here, let me go ahead and wrap it up and drive through a couple main points for you, then I'll open it up for questions, of which I don't doubt there will be many, that's good, and that means you've been paying attention here today.

It appears that we need to collect data for national security purposes research, planning, and for IT system for future upgrades. And collecting data for upgrades of an IT system, you really need to know about the bulk transfers of data and the time, which that data flows, and therefore it can be anonymized.

For national security issues, and for their research, that data will have anomalies in it, and there are problems with anomalies, because can project a false positives, and to get it right they have to continually refine it all. And although this may not sit well with most folks, nevertheless, we can find criminals this way, spies, terrorist cells, or those who work to undermine our system and stability of our nation.

With regards to government and the collection of data, we must understand that if there are bad humans in the world, and there are. And if many of those who shall seek power, may not be good people, and since information is power, you can see the problem, as that information and power will be used to help them promote their own agenda and rise in power, but it undermines the trust of the system of all the individuals in our society and civilization.

On the corporate front, they are going to try to collect as much data on you as they can, they've already started. After all, that's what the grocery stores are doing with their rewards program if you hadn't noticed. Not all the information they are collecting they will ever use, but they may sell it to third part affiliates, partners, or vendors, so that's at issue. Regulation will be needed in this regard, but the consumer should also have choices, but they ought to be wise about those choices and if they choose to give away personal information, they should know the risks, rewards, consequences, and challenges ahead.

Indeed, I thank you very much, and be sure to pick up a handout on your way out, if you didn't already get one, from the good looking blonde, Sherry, at the door. Thanks again, and let's take a 5-minute break, and then head into the question and answer session, deal?



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Mining-and-the-Tough-Personal-Information-Privacy-Sell-Considered&id=4868392

WP Automated Blog Content Posting Tools

Blogging is a great way to build an internet business because it provides an easy way to add fresh new content on a regular basis. Beyond that, the search engines love blogs because of the way all the pages get linked to each other, resulting in websites that get indexed quickly. But the problem with blogging as always been how to add enough content on a consistent basis that will provide the level of fresh new content that is required to get the page rankings to drive sustainable traffic.

That's where the new generation of new technology tools for autoblogging will provide you with lots of help! What was once considered black hat article-scraping techniques, have now turned into sophisticated automated blog posting plugin tools that build real content from multiple sources. And that is what is important in the process... the ability to mix content from multiple sources in one post provides unique content pages that is almost impossible to replicate.

Let's say that you have a niche market with products from multiple sources that you can sell to monetize your blog. With an automated blog posting plugin tool, you can define your automated posts to include articles, video, Clickbank products, eBay products, Amazon products, Yahoo Answers content, and more. Since all of this data is presented in pure HTML by the automated blog posting plugin tool, the search engines will recognize all of the content as unique.

I have set up several automated blogs and am starting to discover a plan to follow over and over as I set up new blogs. Some of these blogs I post one or two new articles per day, others I am posting four to five new articles per day. It really depends on the niche, how many keywords you want to target, and how much content is available that you can auto post.

When I first stumbled across early versions of these tools a few months ago, to say the least I was very skeptical. So I did a lot of research and was very surprised at how many different tools there were available. And just like any other internet marketing tool you consider, there is a wide range of prices and some products are better than others. The real difference between most tools boil down to the following:

    Content sources options
    Monetization capabilitities
    Keyword and content controls

So the bottom line is, if you struggle to write new content on a consistent basis, you might want to consider a Wordpress automated blog content plugin tool.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?WP-Automated-Blog-Content-Posting-Tools&id=3946636

Amazon Price Scraping

Running a software company means that you have to be dynamic, creative, and most of all innovative. I strive every day to create unique and interesting new ways to do business online. Many of my clients sell their products on Amazon, Google Merchant Central, Shopping.com, Pricegrabber, NextTag, and other shopping sites.

Amazon is by far the most powerful, and so I focus much of my efforts on creating software specifically for their portal. I’ve created very lightweight programs that move data from CSV, XML, and other formats to Amazon AWS using the Amazon Inventory API. I’ve also created programs that push data from Magento directly to Amazon, and do this automatically, updating every few hours like clockwork. Some of my customers sell hundreds of thousands of products on Amazon due to this technology.

Doctrine ORM and Magento

I’m a strong believer in the power of Doctrine ORM in combination with Zend Framework, and I was an early adopter of this technology in production environments. More recently, I’ve been using Doctrine to generate models for Magento and then using these models in the development of advanced information scraping systems for price matching my client’s products against Amazon’s merchants. I prefer to use Doctrine because the documentation is awesome, the object model makes sense, and it is far easier to utilize outside of the Magento core.

What is price matching?
Price matching is when you take product data from your database and change it to just slightly below the lowest pricing available on Amazon, depending upon certain rules. The challenge here is that most products from distributors don’t have an ASIN (Amazon product id) number to check against. Here are the operations of my script to collect data about Amazon products:

    Loops through all SKUs in catalog_product_entity
    For each SKU, gets a name, asin, group, new/used price, url, manufacturer from Amazon
    If name, manufacturer, and asin exist it stores the entry in an array
    It loops through all the entries for each sku and it checks for _any_ of the following:
        Does full product name match?
        Does manufacture name match?
        Does the product group match?
        (break the product name into words) Do any words match?
        If any of the following are true, it will add the entry to the database
    If successful, it enters the data into attributes inside Magento:
        scrape_amazon_name
        scrape_amazon_asin
        scrape_amazon_group
        scrape_amazon_new_price
        scrape_amazon_used_price
        scrape_amazon_manufacturer
    If the data already exists, or partial data exists it updates the data
    If the data is null or corrupt, it ignores it

Data Harvesting
As you can see from the above instructions, my system first imports all the data that’s possible. This process is called harvesting. After all the data is harvested, I utilize a feed exporter to create a CSV file specifically in the Amazon format and push it via Amazon AWS encrypted upload.

Feed Export (Price Matching to Amazon’s Lowest Possible Price)
The feed generator then adjusts the pricing according to certain rules:

    Product price is calculated against a “lowest market” percentage. This calculates the absolute lowest price the client is willing to offer
    “Amazon Lowest Price” is then checked against “Absolute Lowest Sale Price” (A.L.S.P.)
    If the “Amazon Lowest Price” is higher than the A.L.S.P, then it calculates 1 dollar lower than A.L.P. and stores that as the price in the feed for use in Amazon.
    The system updates the price in the our database and freezes the product from future imports, then it archives the original import price for reference.
    If an ASIN number exists it pushes the data to amazon using that, if not it uses MPN/ SKU or UPC

Conclusion
This type of system is wonderful because it accurately stores Amazon product data for later use, this way we can see trends in price changes. It insures that my client will always be the absolute lowest price for hundreds of thousands of products on Amazon (or Google/ Shopping.com/ PriceGrabber/ NextTag/ Bing). Whenever the system needs to update, it takes around 10 hours to harvest 100,000 products. It takes 5 minutes to export the entire data set to amazon using my feed software. This makes updating very easy and it can be accomplished in one evening. This is something that we can progressively enhance to protect against competitors throughout the market cycles, and it’s a system that is easy to upgrade in the event Magento changes it’s data model.


Source: http://www.christopherhogan.com/2011/11/12/amazon-price-scraping/

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.


Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Is-Web-Scraping-Relevant-in-Todays-Business-World?&id=7091414

Amazon Product Scraping

Product scraping is important to all companies providing large benefits to those who use it. Be willing to pay for good quality work. By using poor quality product scraping will cost more money in the future. The scraping product is able to do many functions for a business. It can scrape business from the yellow pages of the telephone book, it is able to collect information from places like facebook, email and other popular links.
Using product scraping is easy and cost efficient and can be set up, revised, works easily, and there is support for any questions or concerns. When putting the product scraping together it is best to have all the pieces that are needed so that everything will work efficiently when needed.

First a website needs to be chosen and what information needs to be taken from the website:

The information scrapped here consist from the following items:
- category name;
- product name;
- product description;
- price per item;
- reviews.
All that information can be scrapped to your MySQL database with structure what you preferred, CSV or XLS file, or just plain text with separators.
The product scraping group will analyze what needs to be done, the price and the amount of time that it will take to accomplish the task. Before the product scraping team can begin any work, the client must approve the task. Once the product is completed the team will require feedback from the client good and bad to make improvements of their business. A detailed financial invoice will be presented at the end of the project showing exactly what has been done and the cost of each item, so that there is no misunderstanding between the product scraping team and the client.
The top three benefits of working with product scraping is the low cost, time saved for the company of having to do hours of research, the results that are found, are more accurate, then having a person do the research, with having product scraping do the work, it leaves people available to do other types of work that are not so tedious or time consuming.


Source: http://thewebscraping.com/amazon-product-scraping/

Data Extraction Services - A Helpful Hand For Large Organization

The data extraction is the way to extract and to structure data from not structured and semi-structured electronic documents, as found on the web and in various data warehouses. Data extraction is extremely useful for the huge organizations which deal with considerable amounts of data, daily, which must be transformed into significant information and be stored for the use this later on.

Your company with tons of data but it is difficult to control and convert the data into useful information. Without right information at the right time and based on half of accurate information, decision makers with a company waste time by making wrong strategic decisions. In high competing world of businesses, the essential statistics such as information customer, the operational figures of the competitor and the sales figures inter-members play a big role in the manufacture of the strategic decisions. It can help you to take strategic business decisions that can shape your business' goals..

Outsourcing companies provide custom made services to the client's requirements. A few of the areas where it can be used to generate better sales leads, extract and harvest product pricing data, capture financial data, acquire real estate data, conduct market research , survey and analysis, conduct product research and analysis and duplicate an online database..

The different types of Data Extraction Services:

    Database Extraction:
    Reorganized data from multiple databases such as statistics about competitor's products, pricing and latest offers and customer opinion and reviews can be extracted and stored as per the requirement of company.
    Web Data Extraction:
    Web Data Extraction is also known as data Extraction which is usually referred to the practice of extract or reading text data from a targeted website.

Businesses have now realized about the huge benefits they can get by outsourcing their services. Then outsourcing is profitable option for business. Since all projects are custom based to suit the exact needs of the customer, huge savings in terms of time, money and infrastructure are among the many advantages that outsourcing brings.

Advantages of Outsourcing Data Extraction Services:

    Improved technology scalability
    Skilled and qualified technical staff who are proficient in English
    Advanced infrastructure resources
    Quick turnaround time
    Cost-effective prices
    Secure Network systems to ensure data safety
    Increased market coverage

By outsourcing, you can definitely increase your competitive advantages. Outsourcing of services helps businesses to manage their data effectively, which in turn would enable them to experience an increase in profits.


Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Extraction-Services---A-Helpful-Hand-For-Large-Organization&id=2477589