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/

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/

Microsys A1 Website Scraper Review

The A1 scraper by Microsys is a program that is mainly used to scrape websites to extract data in large quantities for later use in webservices. The scraper works to extract text, URLs etc., using multiple Regexes and saving the output into a CSV file. This tool is can be compared with other web harvesting and web scraping services.
How it works
This scraper program works as follows:
Scan mode

    Go to the ScanWebsite tab and enter the site’s URL into the Path subtab.
    Press the ‘Start scan‘ button to cause the crawler to find text, links and other data on this website and cache them.


Important: URLs that you scrape data from have to pass filters defined in both analysis filters and output filters. The defining of those filters can be set at the Analysis filters and Output filters subtabs respectively. They must be set at the website analysis stage (mode).
Extract mode

    Go to the Scraper Options tab
    Enter the Regex(es) into the Regex input area.
    Define the name and path of the output CSV file.
    The scraper automatically finds and extracts the data according to Regex patterns.

The result will be stored in one CSV file for all the given URLs.

There is a need to mention that the set of regular expressions will be run against all the pages scraped.
Some more scraper features

Using the scraper as a website crawler also affords:

    URL filtering.
    Adjustment of the speed of crawling according to service needs rather than server load.

If  you need to extract data from a complex website, just disable Easy mode: out press the  button. A1 Scraper’s full tutorial is available here.
Conclusion

The A1 Scraper is good for mass gathering of URLs, text, etc., with multiple conditions set. However this scraping tool is designed for using only Regex expressions, which can increase the parsing process time greatly.



Source: http://extract-web-data.com/microsys-a1-website-scraper-review/

Clustering in a Parallel Environment and MapReduce

As we have touched on some basics on Clusters in Data Mining, we want to consider the computation techniques applied for clusters. Those techniques stand in line with the data mining for web traffic analysis.
Parallel computing for cluster description

Using parallelism and distribution are quite fitting in the computation of clusters. Why not use MapReduce strategy and huge modern data vaults for a large collection of input elements? It is most appropriate for calculating cluster descriptions such as centroids and distances to the clustroids from single points:

    The sum of the distances to the other points in the cluster.
    The maximum distance to another point in the cluster.
    The sum of the squares of the distances to the other points in the cluster.

The best approach is to use a MapReduce functionality, but this is not always applicable, so we might be limited to just a Reduce task. MapReduce, with its variations, is not the only technique for parallel computing, but for now we’ll stay with this strategy, as it is most fitting and getting more popular.
MapReduce strategy

The model is derived by the map and reduce functions from functional programming but now is widely spread in many programming languages. There is no direct match between programming functions and parallel computing MapReduce, but this example will clearly explain the strategy:

    Map task: a call map square [1,2,3,4,5] will return [1,4,9,16,25] list, as ’map’ will go through the list and apply the function ‘square’ to each element.
    Reduce task might be to group the even and odd squares into clusters: even [1,4,9,16,25] and odd [1,4,9,16,25] issue [4, 16] and [1, 9, 25] sets.

Example implementation in PHP (only Map task):
<?php// the closure
$square = function($a) {
    return $a * $a;};
// The range of numbers [1-5]
$numbers = range(1, 5);
// We use the closure as a callback function
// here to square each element in our range
$new_numbers = array_map($square, $numbers);
print implode(' ', $new_numbers);
?>

Briefly, the MapReduce implementation can be described in this way.

Map (k1,v1)  →  list(k2,v2)

Reduce(k2, list (v2)) → list(v3)

Map functionality works on input key/value pairs {[0]=>1, [1]=>2, [2]=>3, [3]=>4, [4]=>5} to generate a set of intermediate key/value pairs {[0]=>1, [1]=>4, [2]=>9, [3]=>16, [4]=>25}, and a Reduce functionality merges all intermediate values associated with the intermediate key {[0]=>{1, 9, 25}, [1]=>{4, 16} }.
The best thing about MapReduce is that it fits well into distributed computing thus allowing processing large datasets timewise. When applying this technique, besides distributed computation also input/output issues and processes and subprocess latency issues must be under close consideration.
MapReduce implementation by Google

Google parallel computing has been using MapReduce algorithms since 2003. The library works in a distributed file system and in commodity servers to spread and thus speed up computing effectiveness. Some of the applications of the system are web indexing, ranking of web pages, document clustering. The slides on Google’s applying MapReduce are quite helpful in explaining how this technique is being progressively applied in deployment. Some details, statistics and implementation challenge breakthroughs are well bulleted in those slides.
This picture of MapReduce is the best illustration; I found it in Google:

The best thing is that this strategy, put into the library, deals with messy details, thus emancipating users from implementation problems. Then users can focus solely on the case problem.
There were many search engines before Google but I believe it’s thru parallel computing implementation that Google has advanced that far in indexing and offering fast search query results.
MapReduce for clustering

We start by creating many Map tasks. Each task is assigned a subset of the points. The Map function’s job is to cluster the points it is given. The output is a set of key/value pairs with a fixed key = 1, and a value that is the description of one cluster (also for non-Euclidean space). This description can be any of the previously mentioned possibilities for the centroid. It also might be one of the suggested clustroid descriptions.

Key-value pairs have the same key, therefore there is only one Reduce task. This Reduce task collects descriptions of the clusters produced by each of the Map tasks and merges them appropriately. All the various strategies that we might use to produce the clustering are described in this paper in paragraph 7.6.4. I recommend this book on Data Mining as extensive and well-written treasury (by Anand Rajaraman and Jeff Ullman).

For parallelism in clustering using Map-Reduce, we divide the data into chunks and cluster each chunk in parallel, using a Map task. The results from each Map task can be further clustered in a single Reduce task.

Summary

The MapReduce model is a technique for parallel computing; clustering computation is relatively easily done with it. One of the frameworks for distributed computing applications is Apache Hadoop, which incorporates the MapReduce strategy. Other ones we’ve briefly described in this post.




Source: http://extract-web-data.com/clustering-in-a-parallel-environment-and-mapreduce/

Advantages of Outsourcing Product Data Entry

Offshore outsourcing has proved itself to be the most effective business solution over the years and data entry is one business service that is outsourced today. Data is the lifeline of any company and it plays a huge role when it comes to planing for the future. Maintaining huge chunks of data is easier said than done. It requires a lot of time and money. So many top companies prefer to outsource data entry services. Online store owners outsource product data entry services because it is a cost effective solution to its customized needs. Outsourcing product data entry provides e-business owners with the opportunity to cut costs, deliver customer value, speed up their turn around time and maintain data security. It is one of the best business moves which has provided tangible results consistently.

COSTS
The one thought that spins the wheels on outsourcing is its cost cutting feature. Outsourcing product data entry brings down the expenditure on manpower and allows access to specialized skills which saves time and effort. Not to mention expenditure on infrastructure. Investments made need to be worthwhile and one made to outsource data entry is worth every penny. Outsourcing also cuts costs in terms of training employees and ensuring continuous learning processes so as to be updated with the latest technology.

TIME ZONE
An underlying advantage of this business practice is its willingness to be flexible according to client needs and expectations. The time zone difference is a big advantage and one that could be exploited. Offshore outsourcing provides the luxury of getting work done around the clock and that is an advantage worth being made use of. The time zone advantage gives the opportunity to increase the volume of work and its expected level of quality.

QUALITY CONTROL
Quality is usually a great concern which is overcome by a team of quality experts who adopt stringent process to generate accurate results. It simplifies processes and increases the client efficiency in achieving their targets. Outsourcing product data entry builds a competitive edge to the clients; it reduces stress and enables them to be more creative at their core processes. A good quality control process promises better customer satisfaction.

BETTER CUSTOMER SATISFACTION
Customer is the king; the market place survives on his satisfaction and loyalty. Outsourcing helps its clients build its brand image, grade up its value and focus on important areas in reaching its set promises to the customer. Employees can generate more revenues as data entry tasks are fulfilled by reliable resources. On the other hand, outsourcing companies also grow in providing prompt delivery of projects, low turn around time without any excuses on quality.

DATA SECURITY
Security plays a major role in outsourcing product data entry. Businesses have an edge over their competitors because of their ability to maintain data security. Most Outsourcing companies have Non Disclosure agreements with their clients. These agreements put in place policies and procedures to ensure no loss of critical data. Security concerns are promptly addressed with proficient support teams who maintain confidential details.

CONCENTRATION ON CORE BUSINESS AREAS
Outsourcing product data entry also gives businesses the chance to spend more time and effort on their core competencies. This would enhance innovative business models which generates expected profits, thus expanding e business to new heights of growth and development.

Kumar is an expert author for writing article about data entry outsourcing. Vserve Solution offers various services like litigation support service, product catalog management, image processing etc. Please visit our website http://www.vservesolution.com for more information.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Advantages-of-Outsourcing-Product-Data-Entry&id=4745173

Better Business Management by Using Data Entry Services

Data entry services are integral part of any company that has data that needs to be managed. Most of the companies use internet for online data entry, so it is vital for the people doing it, has sufficient computer literacy. Data entry work is time consuming and lengthy therefore outsourcing online data entry services to India does the trick. When you outsource this service, the team of professionals handles your work effectively.

Having updated and correct data round the clock is of utmost importance, so that when the data is required it is there. For every business, data holds much importance. Many Website Design Company from India does the data entry job and outsourcing to them lightens the burden of data management. Study the website design portfolio of the website design company to get an idea about the work of the company. These companies have trained and skilled workforce that can handle data entry services efficiently.

Selection of data entry outsourcing firm depends upon the amount of data that is to be managed. You can hire data entry operator working on part-time or full-time basis for shorter or longer duration of time. If your company requires data handling on regular basis, then outsource your work to reliable outsourcing company.

These companies can handle successfully different types of data related to your business. It may include data conversion, documentation, data entry of the visitors and so on. Data entry services are also useful in keeping track of debit and credit card transactions, online forms filled in by the website visitors. In this competitive business atmosphere having up-to-date and organized data goes a long way in ensuring success, conquering your competitors.

Many companies carry out online survey to figure out the responses of the customers, data entry outsourcing helps in keeping track of the responses being entered and what are their wants. Data about the survey data along with mailing address, contact information, etc are stored so that they can be informed about any special change, addition or scheme in your business.

Whether your business is small scale, medium or big scale one; data outsourcing takes care of all data entry operations that form important part in business success. A good website design outsourcing company from India providing data entry services ensures better service quality and on-time delivery of result oriented services.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Better-Business-Management-by-Using-Data-Entry-Services&id=1600148

Processing Of Unorganized Data Is Important For Your Online Business

For every online business it is important to have a management service for organizing their paperwork and their documents. These services are actually a fundamental factor for your business. Form Processing is categorized under data processing services to make your business well-organized with informative details on your website. Form processing is taking out the information from the established forms, scrutinized images. Form Processing Services will help you in making good business links.

Online Form Processing Service offers you assured quality and trust when processing a variety of forms. There are huge numbers of organizations that are using these Forms Processing Services for enjoying the benefits of well-organized data. It is an essential tool for all the organizations and firms.

Outsourcing your Data related work to professional firms is always a great idea and they help you with other advantages too. These services offer you low expenditure, fast processing services of your forms. They help you to accumulate large volumes of important data efficiently and securely. These services are always in demand and are appreciated by their consumers for the precision of their rapid online form processing services. Reduce your burden by outsourcing these Data related Services to an expert and dedicated Data Entry Services.

Why there is a need to outsource your Form Processing Services to professionals?

Outsourcing Data Processing services involves work like capturing, digitizing and processing of data from a variety of resources and converting them into a database for efficient analysis and research.

It could be anything like insurance forms, medical claims, online forms, order forms, feedback, surveys, and questionnaires. Handling all the data of every form and maintaining these records is a tiring job for the organizations that have to focus on their core activities.

Many companies and organizations make use of questionnaires and forms in order to communicate with their customers and gathering information and making it a beneficial tool for your business. It is necessary to know and consider about the process and the requirements of the document.

Let's have a look on the beneficial side of Data Processing Services

It Reduces Cost - Managing manual document classification, extracting documents and separating them is a costly process. Form processing services help to reduce the cost and give cost-effective solutions.

It Increases Speed - Doing manual document classification, document separation and extraction of the data is tiresome, time-consuming, and a bad use of knowledgeable workers' takes huge time, Form processing services are time-saving and it increases speed.

It helps to upgrade - You can upgrade its features and level simply by reactivating the license. Installation of the software is not required. Better compatibility of your configurations is guaranteed.

It Increases Data Security - Programmed document processing reduces the demand of human effort to interact with the confidential data and hence increases your security. By providing capability it classifies the documents as they get scanned and fill them into the workflow system for immediate and automatic routing.

It Easily Generate Performance report- Manual processes are very tough to review. Using this service helps to control, monitor and report documents. As a result, the organizations will meet the requirements of the problem in a much better way and can be identified more easily.

It prevents fraud- If your data is already stored in a proper way, and you have all the information, it reduces the risk of fraud. Because storing data in proper way facilitate accurate data, you can anytime check them if needed.

Outsourcing form processing services are safe and secure for the handling of confidential documents. Additionally, these services are affordable and more often than not low in cost, which make it profitable in the long run. Thus, if you want you too can hire professionals for such data entry services, which ensure complete accuracy of data while ensuring timely completion of your projects. Since taking these services you can be able to concentrate on other task easily.

A well-qualified and knowledgeable team of experts create this work very easy. The knowledgeable venture administrator and staff can handle a large number of information handling solutions to make your company much easier thus helps in upgrading your details management system software. The prepared data and result is examined beforehand, so that customers should get quality service and precise data.

Ashima is a content writer at SunTec India, product Data Entry Services. She is a versatile writer and can write on a variety of topics. She has keen interest in getting knowledge about Form Processing Services and likes to share her ideas on the same.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Processing-Of-Unorganized-Data-Is-Important-For-Your-Online-Business&id=7747653

Data Mining's Importance in Today's Corporate Industry

A large amount of information is collected normally in business, government departments and research & development organizations. They are typically stored in large information warehouses or bases. For data mining tasks suitable data has to be extracted, linked, cleaned and integrated with external sources. In other words, it is the retrieval of useful information from large masses of information, which is also presented in an analyzed form for specific decision-making.

Data mining is the automated analysis of large information sets to find patterns and trends that might otherwise go undiscovered. It is largely used in several applications such as understanding consumer research marketing, product analysis, demand and supply analysis, telecommunications and so on. Data Mining is based on mathematical algorithm and analytical skills to drive the desired results from the huge database collection.

It can be technically defined as the automated mining of hidden information from large databases for predictive analysis. Web mining requires the use of mathematical algorithms and statistical techniques integrated with software tools.

Data mining includes a number of different technical approaches, such as:

    Clustering
    Data Summarization
    Learning Classification Rules
    Finding Dependency Networks
    Analyzing Changes
    Detecting Anomalies

The software enables users to analyze large databases to provide solutions to business decision problems. Data mining is a technology and not a business solution like statistics. Thus the data mining software provides an idea about the customers that would be intrigued by the new product.

It is available in various forms like text, web, audio & video data mining, pictorial data mining, relational databases, and social networks. Data mining is thus also known as Knowledge Discovery in Databases since it involves searching for implicit information in large databases. The main kinds of data mining software are: clustering and segmentation software, statistical analysis software, text analysis, mining and information retrieval software and visualization software.

Data Mining therefore has arrived on the scene at the very appropriate time, helping these enterprises to achieve a number of complex tasks that would have taken up ages but for the advent of this marvelous new technology.

Our web research provides detailed information on data mining, business intelligence data mining, web data mining, online data research, web research services. We will closely work with you; we guarantee clear, focused and relevant information that meets your specifications. If you want to know about our web research services, please visit us: http://www.outsourcingwebresearch.com.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Minings-Importance-in-Todays-Corporate-Industry&id=2057401

Data Entry - Outsource or Keep It Local?

Data entry services are usually something of a contentious subject, both in the public's eye and also in the data entry community itself, primarily because of the location from which the services are obtained. Some clients know that a lot of data entry is outsourced to developing countries such as India and Pakistan, and this can often put them off, particularly when the entry is in the English language and many clients would prefer the data inputting to be done by someone whose first language is English.

It's also a raging debate within the data entry industry itself, and there is a conflict between providing well priced services that are outsourced to other countries, or work that is completed locally by native English speakers but who will inevitably charge more.

As an experienced member or a reputable data entry supplier, my experience with outsourced services has been positive for the most part; however, it isn't always the case, much like with anything else in life. Clients are justifiably concerned that the entry work that will come back will not be of an acceptable quality and I'm sure this has happened before.

However there are a few steps that can be taken in order to ensure that the service supplied is not just an adequate one, but an excellent one, and they are mostly common sense, but it's still worthwhile to keep a list of a few things to remember:

- Request a sample

Requesting a sample is always a good idea and not just of any work but of your work itself so that you can see that the work was completed successfully. Any company that knows what they are doing will offer this as a good will gesture as well as to show you that their service is of good quality. This allows you to assess the quality of the output and it may even be a good idea to get a few samples at once just to see what works best for you.

- Check their credentials and experience

There's nothing wrong with start-up companies by any means, but in this case you may want to check their experience and credentials as a company. Here is the UK, it's a very good sign when a data entry company has the ICO, which guarantees higher quality of data entry as well as superior data protection. The ISO 9001:2000 is also one to look out for as this means that the company's work has been approved by the governing body of the industry, the ISO and is checked on regularly.

- Don't be put off by a lack of testimonials

Just because a company doesn't have testimonials doesn't mean they aren't a good company. In this industry, a lot of larger and smaller sized companies for that matter don't always want it to be known who they're outsourcing their work to, let alone that they're outsourcing at all. Therefor it is difficult for companies to come up with a good testimonials list at the best of times.

- Visit or arrange a meeting with the company

Human instinct can be your best friend. Visit the company premises if possible and see if you can see any work being produced or just to check that they are a good establishment that is well set up.

Those are a few steps to take to ensure that you get the right service for you and one that, if you are looking at needing a continuous supply of data entry work completing can become a business partnership to last for years. The argument regarding home-based data entry and outsourcing will go on and on, but the best thing you can do is to trust in the company you choose, make sure to get a sample before committing and judge for yourself when you get (hopefully) great results back.

Pearl Scan Solutions supply top of the line data entry services for our clients throughout the UK. We only use the best data entry specialists in order to get the best results whilst offering a competitively priced service. We also offer a free sample to try before you buy.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Data-Entry---Outsource-or-Keep-It-Local?&id=6401739

Benefits of Outsourcing Data Entry Work in India

Now Days it's a trend to outsource Data Entry Work to reliable service provider who provides excellent output out of their work. Many Companies or Organization prefer to outsource data entry work to offshore location. One of the key reasons why it's become so popular is the fact that the services they provide from highly qualified professionals with cost effective and time bound.

India is well positioned to address global BPO needs. Statistics expose that nearly half of the Fortune 800 companies believe India as a reliable target for offshore outsourcing.

There are lots of benefits of outsourcing data entry work in India

o Reduce capital costs of infrastructure
o Increase productivity and efficiency
o Reduce storage needs
o Latest standard and technology
o Extremely trained workforce
o Quick turn around time with high accuracy
o Strong quality maintained
o Saving human resources
o Focus on your core business.
o Competitive pricing which are low as 40-60% of the prevailing US costs
o Excellent training infrastructure

Data Entry is the procedure of handling and processing over data. There are different forms of data entry like data entry for survey forms, legal services, entry for medical claim forms. Data for keeping track for credit and debit card transactions.

Data entry online services include entering data into websites, e-books, entering image in different format, Data processing and submitting forms, creating database for indexing and mailing for data entered. It also used in insurance claim entry. Procedure of processing of the forms and insurances claims are kept track of data entry services. Scanned image are required for file access and credit and debit card entry.

Data Entry is one of the leading elements for running a business successfully.

Offshore Data Entry has great infrastructure for data entry work projects. We have great equipments, facilities which provide you accurate data entry with high data security. Our data entry services, data entry contract give you quality assurance.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Benefits-of-Outsourcing-Data-Entry-Work-in-India&id=1269756

4 Types of Outsourcing Data Entry Services

In present era of globalization, it is required for any type of business to manage all data and information handy and easy accessible. Data entry is a best option with its multitude advantages but it consumes your times. In this competitive business world no one can afford time so outsourcing is become most favorite term. And data entry services are become most popular term for outsourcing.

Internet and batter communication strategies made data entry outsourcing easier. Low pricing, rapid service and accurate result also attract business for outsourcing. There are many types of data entry services available in market depth here we are talking about most important 4 types as defined as below:

Online data entry: It is a process of entering information into online databases or applications. This service includes medical forms, shipping documents, insurance claims, e-books and catalogs data entry. Outsourcing companies have reliable resources like high-speed broadband connection and well configured computer system to accomplish the task rapidly and accurately.

Offline data entry: It includes offline form filling, offline database entry, URL list collection, offline data collection etc. It is most requirements of various types of businesses like telecoms, medical, insurance, social, commercial, financial and others. To complete this task speedily, offshore outsourcing company have skilled experts with good typing speed and latest IT equipments.

Numeric data entry: It is a process of managing digits or numeric information and data into various formats like HTML, XML, EXCEL, WORD and Access. In this service includes medical billing, examination results, identity details, business reports, survey report, estimated budget, numeric information and more... It is very complicated task, outsourcing company make it easier with its expertise. For outsourcing just send requirements in any format and sure get quality output.

Textual data entry: It is mainly used for E-book creation as it is easy to keep and easy to access anywhere. It involves mailing lists, word processing, yellow page listings, manuscript typing, e-books and legal documents. This service offer outputs in various formats like HTML, Frame Maker, XML, PDF, GIF, JPG, TIFF, PageMaker, Excel, Word and QuarkXPress.

All above services is vital for any sized business and organization. With the help of IT outsourcing services you can get effective solution with huge savings of time and cost.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?4-Types-of-Outsourcing-Data-Entry-Services&id=5275811

Outsourcing Data Entry Services

Data entry services are among the many benefits that the IT sector is providing to corporate firms worldwide. These services often range from simple text data entry to alpha numerical entries requiring calculations such as bill processing for clients. To meet the demands for high quality and accurate textual and numerical data entry jobs, most outsourcing firms are employing the services of talented operators who are skilled in fast keyboard operations and word processing software.

Often business firms find it difficult to manage their huge data manipulation jobs and are compelled to outsource such jobs. In order to meet the deadlines in document entry jobs, the Business Processing Outsourcing (BPOs) units that are engaged in providing data entry services are offering their services in a fast, competitive and efficient manner. Quality in work is given top priority by these BPOs and to ensure this, they utilize the services of proofreaders who always double check the processed data for errors.

Data entry service providers also provide customized document entry services, suiting the requirements of client companies. Common data entry jobs being offered by BPOs include:

o Online data entry
o Offline data entry
o Data capture and conversion
o Document processing and management
o Medical document entry
o Insurance claim processing
o Census document entry

To cater to the increasing need of business firms to process their critical data as early as possible, most document processing firms have their own backup centers with sufficient employees. Most BPO firms operate round the clock to ensure that no work remains in pending state. The 24 hr operations of these firms also ensure that the daily requirements in critical data processing such as insurance claim processing are done in a timely manner.

Most BPOs, with the help of advanced IT equipments and professional trainers, can instantly train employees for mission critical data entry services and thus are capable of providing quality services for both short term as well as long term requirements of clients. The high quality training ensures that all their employees carry out the assigned jobs efficiently and accurately within the proposed time frame.

With the outsourcing of data entry services, most companies are able to concentrate on improving their core services and need only worry less about their daily clerical works. To add value to the services, excellent customer support is also provided by these document processing service providers. The quality document processing services provided by these firms help many corporate firms to stay competitive and profitable in the challenging business arena of today.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Outsourcing-Data-Entry-Services&id=1523730

Important Data Processing Services Can Help Your Business

Data Processing is nothing but conversion of unorganized data into useful formation. Information in itself is useless unless it is in a form where meaning could be derived out of it. Data processing consists of tasks that involve entering of data into the computer, summarize it and present it in a way that users can understand it and use the data as required.

It is very common these days to outsource data processing services. Service providers have developed many automated processes that processes information in no time which results in considerable reduction in cost and effort. More over it offers a chance to the business managers to concentrate more on core tasks of business and secondary tasks are taken care of by some expert at nominal charges.

Following are few of the important data processing services that can help business considerably:
• Forms processing: processing of forms like application forms, registration forms, admission forms etc.
• Cheque processing: like scanning, verification and evaluation, truncation and market assessment of cheques.
• Image processing: scanning, enhancing, optimizing and converting the images into desired format.
• OCR Clean up: recognition of errors and inconsistencies of a large amount of figures and elimination of same to produce a quality document.
• Survey Processing: questionnaire preparation, punching of the result of the survey, analysis and interpretation of survey feedback, designing of presentation of graphics for analysis.
• Data Mining: Accumulation of data and meta data, online data search and collection information through various websites and other online resources.
• Data Cleansing: eliminate discrepancies in data and information accuracy. It involves homogenizing, validation and rectification of records.


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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

Compensation to Outsource Data Entry Work

The data input is used to transform data into information. They entered data into the computer, the keyboard entry, scanning and voice recognition includes. The volume and the critical services in enterprise and desktop world needs more and more in this electronic age has become. It is an important task for any successful company in the long run.

Data entry is the center of every business and even though it may seem easier to manage and manipulate it many processes that must be addressed systematically. It is a characteristic of such an undertaking should be properly handled to make your business a successful endeavor. These services cover most business and professional activities, including:

* Online Entry

* Out of entry

* Input Image

* Document Input

* Book Entry

* Entry Insurance Claim

* Catalog Entry

* The text and numeric input

* Application forms invoice

* Documents Legal entry

* Reports Corporate entry

Data entry work is very long and tiring, so the best option is therefore to support the provision of outsourcing companies. In the competitive world of today, all companies have regularly updated information and data certainly help advance your competitor. In today's market, solutions capture data for different types of businesses are at very competitive prices. A growing number of companies turn to outsourcing services.

Advantages of Data Entry Outsourcing:

* So that you can concentrate on your core business

* It lowers the capital costs of infrastructure

* Competitive rates are as low as 60%

* Removal of management headache

* Improved employee satisfaction with higher value jobs

* Use the latest standards and new technologies

* Fast turnaround and high quality

* A better use of available resources in the competitive world

* High-speed and low-cost communication

* Line of data from anywhere

Data Entry Services provided by outsourcing companies offer various services under this. No matter what kind of services you want, everything is through this outsourcing services enable companies to support. Increase your business by outsourcing work. If you are looking for data entry specialists in subcontract work then we will certainly meet your needs.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Compensation-to-Outsource-Data-Entry-Work&id=3486446

One of the Main Differences Between Statistical Analysis and Data Mining

Two methods of analyzing data that are common in both academic and commercial fields are statistical analysis and data mining. While statistical analysis has a long scientific history, data mining is a more recent method of data analysis that has arisen from Computer Science. In this article I want to give an introduction to these methods and outline what I believe is one of the main differences between the two fields of analysis.

Statistical analysis commonly involves an analyst formulating a hypothesis and then testing the validity of this hypothesis by running statistical tests on data that may have been collected for the purpose. For example, if an analyst was studying the relationship between income level and the ability to get a loan, the analyst may hypothesis that there will be a correlation between income level and the amount of credit someone may qualify for.

The analyst could then test this hypothesis with the use of a data set that contains a number of people along with their income levels and the credit available to them. A test could be run that indicates for example that there may be a high degree of confidence that there is indeed a correlation between income and available credit. The main point here is that the analyst has formulated a hypothesis and then used a statistical test along with a data set to provide evidence in support or against that hypothesis.

Data mining is another area of data analysis that has arisen more recently from computer science that has a number of differences to traditional statistical analysis. Firstly, many data mining techniques are designed to be applied to very large data sets, while statistical analysis techniques are often designed to form evidence in support or against a hypothesis from a more limited set of data.

Probably the mist significant difference here, however, is that data mining techniques are not used so much to form confidence in a hypothesis, but rather extract unknown relationships may be present in the data set. This is probably best illustrated with an example. Rather than in the above case where a statistician may form a hypothesis between income levels and an applicants ability to get a loan, in data mining, there is not typically an initial hypothesis. A data mining analyst may have a large data set on loans that have been given to people along with demographic information of these people such as their income level, their age, any existing debts they have and if they have ever defaulted on a loan before.

A data mining technique may then search through this large data set and extract a previously unknown relationship between income levels, peoples existing debt and their ability to get a loan.

While there are quite a few differences between statistical analysis and data mining, I believe this difference is at the heart of the issue. A lot of statistical analysis is about analyzing data to either form confidence for or against a stated hypothesis while data mining is often more about applying an algorithm to a data set to extract previously unforeseen relationships.



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Collecting Data With Web Scrapers

There is a large amount of data available only through websites. However, as many people have found out, trying to copy data into a usable database or spreadsheet directly out of a website can be a tiring process. Data entry from internet sources can quickly become cost prohibitive as the required hours add up. Clearly, an automated method for collating information from HTML-based sites can offer huge management cost savings.

Web scrapers are programs that are able to aggregate information from the internet. They are capable of navigating the web, assessing the contents of a site, and then pulling data points and placing them into a structured, working database or spreadsheet. Many companies and services will use programs to web scrape, such as comparing prices, performing online research, or tracking changes to online content.

Let's take a look at how web scrapers can aid data collection and management for a variety of purposes.

Improving On Manual Entry Methods

Using a computer's copy and paste function or simply typing text from a site is extremely inefficient and costly. Web scrapers are able to navigate through a series of websites, make decisions on what is important data, and then copy the info into a structured database, spreadsheet, or other program. Software packages include the ability to record macros by having a user perform a routine once and then have the computer remember and automate those actions. Every user can effectively act as their own programmer to expand the capabilities to process websites. These applications can also interface with databases in order to automatically manage information as it is pulled from a website.

Aggregating Information

There are a number of instances where material stored in websites can be manipulated and stored. For example, a clothing company that is looking to bring their line of apparel to retailers can go online for the contact information of retailers in their area and then present that information to sales personnel to generate leads. Many businesses can perform market research on prices and product availability by analyzing online catalogues.

Data Management

Managing figures and numbers is best done through spreadsheets and databases; however, information on a website formatted with HTML is not readily accessible for such purposes. While websites are excellent for displaying facts and figures, they fall short when they need to be analyzed, sorted, or otherwise manipulated. Ultimately, web scrapers are able to take the output that is intended for display to a person and change it to numbers that can be used by a computer. Furthermore, by automating this process with software applications and macros, entry costs are severely reduced.

This type of data management is also effective at merging different information sources. If a company were to purchase research or statistical information, it could be scraped in order to format the information into a database. This is also highly effective at taking a legacy system's contents and incorporating them into today's systems.

Overall, a web scraper is a cost effective user tool for data manipulation and management.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Collecting-Data-With-Web-Scrapers&id=4223877