Selenium IDE and Web Scraping

Selenium is a browser automation framework that includes IDE, Remote Control server and bindings of various flavors including Java, .Net, Ruby, Python and other. In this post we touch on the basic structure of the framework and its application to  Web Scraping.
What is Selenium IDE


Selenium IDE is an integrated development environment for Selenium scripts. It is implemented as a Firefox plugin, and it allows recording browsers’ interactions in order to edit them. This works well for software tests, composing and debugging. The Selenium Remote Control is a server specific for a particular environment; it causes custom scripts to be implemented for controlled browsers. Selenium deploys on Windows, Linux, and iOS. How various Selenium components are supported with major browsers read here.
What does Selenium do and Web Scraping

Basically Selenium automates browsers. This ability is no doubt to be applied to web scraping. Since browsers (and Selenium) support JavaScript, jQuery and other methods working with dynamic content why not use this mix for benefit in web scraping, rather than to try to catch Ajax events with plain code? The second reason for this kind of scrape automation is browser-fasion data access (though today this is emulated with most libraries).

Yes, Selenium works to automate browsers, but how to control Selenium from a custom script to automate a browser for web scraping? There are Selenium PHP and other language libraries (bindings) providing for scripts to call and use Selenium. It is possible to write Selenium clients (using the libraries) in almost any language we prefer, for example Perl, Python, Java, PHP etc. Those libraries (API), along with a server, the Java written server that invokes browsers for actions, constitute the Selenum RC (Remote Control). Remote Control automatically loads the Selenium Core into the browser to control it. For more details in Selenium components refer to here.


A tough scrape task for programmer

“…cURL is good, but it is very basic.  I need to handle everything manually; I am creating HTTP requests by hand.
This gets difficult – I need to do a lot of work to make sure that the requests that I send are exactly the same as the requests that a browser would
send, both for my sake and for the website’s sake. (For my sake
because I want to get the right data, and for the website’s sake
because I don’t want to cause error messages or other problems on their site because I sent a bad request that messed with their web application).  And if there is any important javascript, I need to imitate it with PHP.
It would be a great benefit to me to be able to control a browser like Firefox with my code. It would solve all my problems regarding the emulation of a real browser…
it seems that Selenium will allow me to do this…” -Ryan S

Yes, that’s what we will consider below.
Scrape with Selenium

In order to create scripts that interact with the Selenium Server (Selenium RC, Selenium Remote Webdriver) or create local Selenium WebDriver script, there is the need to make use of language-specific client drivers (also called Formatters, they are included in the selenium-ide-1.10.0.xpi package). The Selenium servers, drivers and bindings are available at Selenium download page.
The basic recipe for scrape with Selenium:

    Use Chrome or Firefox browsers
    Get Firebug or Chrome Dev Tools (Cntl+Shift+I) in action.
    Install requirements (Remote control or WebDriver, libraries and other)
    Selenium IDE : Record a ‘test’ run thru a site, adding some assertions.
    Export as a Python (other language) script.
    Edit it (loops, data extraction, db input/output)
    Run script for the Remote Control

The short intro Slides for the scraping of tough websites with Python & Selenium are here (as Google Docs slides) and here (Slide Share).
Selenium components for Firefox installation guide

For how to install the Selenium IDE to Firefox see  here starting at slide 21. The Selenium Core and Remote Control installation instructions are there too.
Extracting for dynamic content using jQuery/JavaScript with Selenium

One programmer is doing a similar thing …

1. launch a selenium RC (remote control) server
2. load a page
3. inject the jQuery script
4. select the interested contents using jQuery/JavaScript
5. send back to the PHP client using JSON.

He particularly finds it quite easy and convenient to use jQuery for
screen scraping, rather than using PHP/XPath.
Conclusion

The Selenium IDE is the popular tool for browser automation, mostly for its software testing application, yet also in that Web Scraping techniques for tough dynamic websites may be implemented with IDE along with the Selenium Remote Control server. These are the basic steps for it:

    Record the ‘test‘ browser behavior in IDE and export it as the custom programming language script
    Formatted language script runs on the Remote Control server that forces browser to send HTTP requests and then script catches the Ajax powered responses to extract content.

Selenium based Web Scraping is an easy task for small scale projects, but it consumes a lot of memory resources, since for each request it will launch a new browser instance.



Source: http://extract-web-data.com/selenium-ide-and-web-scraping/

The Benefits of Data Outsourcing

Data is the foundation of all companies and provides a source for multiplying your company with tremendous leaps and bounds. The benefits of data entry outsourcing are numerous with expansion of methodologies, which provide your business with many other numerous benefits. Data entry is a generalized term, which entails virtual services like data mining, data conversion, image processing, web data entry, data extraction and many others. All of these tasks are very much a stronghold in getting the processes of any company streamlined without wasting time and resources.

If you think about the benefits of data-entry outsourcing, it is necessary for any company to add the need of data entry along with other important resources, which go with this task. It is also important to know the format, which the final version of data is to be utilized. You want to go for data that is available for usage in a cross platform environment.

There are many benefits of outsourcing. In today's society, data-entry services offer peace of mine as well as a sigh of relief for business owners. Here are some benefits which data-entry outsourcing companies can offer your company:

o Your complete data management needs being taken care of. When you outsource your data-entry needs to an outside company, you are going to benefit with having managed and synchronized data. This will ensure that your company will save time. The best thing about outsourcing companies is that some of the managed data can be utilized for repository purposes.

o Time is very critical when dealing with competition. You want to get data in and out of your business in order to reap the maximum possible benefits in the least amount of time. Utilizing an outsourcing company minimizes your time spent while improving the efficiency of your business processes.

o Your sole purpose for utilizing data-entry outsourcing companies should be to receive quality as well as the most quantity for your dollar. Quality cannot be compromised. Quantity also needs to be delivered fast and on time. There is no leeway given when it comes to data entry work. Receiving data-entry work on time with fast turn around allows your business to benefit with the business overhead.

o Outsourcing companies are affordable and what does this mean for your business? This will reduce your business costs while maximizing your profits.

With these benefits mentioned, data entry outsourcing offers a lot of potential for expansion for your company. Learn More About Data Entry Service.



Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?The-Benefits-of-Data-Outsourcing&id=3331295

Various Data Mining Techniques

Also called Knowledge Discover in Databases (KDD), data mining is the process of automatically sifting through large volumes of data for patterns, using tools such as clustering, classification, association rule mining, and many more. There are several major data mining techniques developed and known today, and this article will briefly tackle them, along with tools for increased efficiency, including phone look up services.

Classification is a classic data mining technique. Based on machine learning, it is used to classify each item on a data set into one of predefined set of groups or classes. This method uses mathematical techniques, like linear programming, decision trees, neural network, and statistics. For instance, you can apply this technique in an application that predicts which current employees will most probably leave in the future, based on the past records of those who have resigned or left the company.

Association is one of the most used techniques, and it is where a pattern is discovered basing on a relationship of a specific item on other items within the same transaction. Market basket analysis, for example, uses association to figure out what products or services are purchased together by clients. Businesses use the data produced to devise their marketing campaign.

Sequential patterns, too, aim to discover similar patterns in data transaction over a given business phase or period. These findings are used for business analysis to see relationships among data.

Clustering makes useful cluster of objects that maintain similar characteristics using an automatic method. While classification assigns objects into predefined classes, clustering defines the classes and puts objects in them. Predication, on the other hand, is a technique that digs into the relationship between independent variables and between dependent and independent variables. It can be used to predict profits in the future - a fitted regression curve used for profit prediction can be drawn from historical sale and profit data.

Of course, it is highly important to have high-quality data in all these data mining techniques. A multi-database web service, for instance, can be incorporated to provide the most accurate telephone number lookup. It delivers real-time access to a range of public, private, and proprietary telephone data. This type of phone look up service is fast-becoming a defacto standard for cleaning data and it communicates directly with telco data sources as well.

Phone number look up web services - just like lead, name, and address validation services - help make sure that information is always fresh, up-to-date, and in the best shape for data mining techniques to be applied.

Equip your business with better leads and get better conversion rates by using phone look up and similar real-time web services.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Various-Data-Mining-Techniques&id=6985662

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

Unleash the Hidden Potential of Your Business Data With Data Mining and Extraction Services

Every business, small or large, is continuously amassing data about customers, employees and nearly every process in their business cycle. Although all management staff utilize data collected from their business as a basis for decision making in areas such as marketing, forecasting, planning and trouble-shooting, very often they are just barely scratching the surface. Manual data analysis is time-consuming and error-prone, and its limited functions result in the overlooking of valuable information that improve bottom-lines. Often, the sheer quantity of data prevents accurate and useful analysis by those without the necessary technology and experience. It is an unfortunate reality that much of this data goes to waste and companies often never realize that a valuable resource is being left untapped.

Automated data mining services allow your company to tap into the latent potential of large volumes of raw data and convert it into information that can be used in decision-making. While the use of the latest software makes data mining and data extraction fast and affordable, experienced professional data analysts are a key part of the data mining services offered by our company. Making the most of your data involves more than automatically generated reports from statistical software. It takes analysis and interpretation skills that can only be performed by experienced data analysis experts to ensure that your business databases are translated into information that you can easily comprehend and use in almost every aspect of your business.

Who Can Benefit From Data Mining Services?

If you are wondering what types of companies can benefit from data extraction services, the answer is virtually every type of business. This includes organizations dealing in customer service, sales and marketing, financial products, research and insurance.

How is Raw Data Converted to Useful Information?

There are several steps in data mining and extraction, but the most important thing for you as a business owner is to be assured that, throughout the process, the confidentiality of your data is our primary concern. Upon receiving your data, it is converted into the necessary format so that it can be entered into a data warehouse system. Next, it is compiled into a database, which is then sifted through by data mining experts to identify relevant data. Our trained and experienced staff then scan and analyze your data using a variety of methods to identify association or relationships between variables; clusters and classes, to identify correlations and groups within your data; and patterns, which allow trends to be identified and predictions to be made. Finally, the results are compiled in the form of written reports, visual data and spreadsheets, according to the needs of your business.

Our team of data mining, extraction and analyses experts have already helped a great number of businesses to tap into the potential of their raw data, with our speedy, cost-efficient and confidential services. Contact us today for more information on how our data mining and extraction services can help your business.





Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Unleash-the-Hidden-Potential-of-Your-Business-Data-With-Data-Mining-and-Extraction-Services&id=4642076

Should Corporate Think Tanks Scan IT Logs, and Data Mine for Innovative Ideas?

Most people in the corporate environment would have a problem with their bosses snooping their e-mails. Nevertheless, we know this happens every day because the employers want to make sure their employees are not screwing off and wasting company time. Every CFO knows that productivity in the workplace, or office environment is paramount to profits. Now then, I have another question, one that you have not considered yet regarding this issue.

My question is this; what if your employer was snooping your e-mails and looking for ideas which you had when corresponding with various vendors, customers, or other employees? That is to say what if your employer had an algorithm, which searched for keywords in e-mail correspondence that could give them insight into innovative ways to modify their products or services? Would you as employee be upset about something like that?

In other words, they are not looking to get you in trouble, rather they are looking for ideas and innovations which will help the company do better in the marketplace, become more efficient, and help the company achieve its quarterly objectives, while increasing shareholders equity.

There was an interesting article posted in MIT's Technology Review titled "Extracting Business Ideas from IT Logs Software finds hidden business insights in Web and phone logs, e-mail, and network traffic," posted on Friday, February 11, 2011 by Tom Simonite.

Indeed, I find this very interesting because as the coordinator for a think tank which operates on the Internet, it always occurred to me that perhaps we should have an algorithm that searches through all the e-mails to find the smartest humans amongst us, and perhaps hire them to help with legislative, judicial, military, and executive decisions in the government.

What if businesses, corporations, universities, nonprofits, and government agencies started doing this with all their employees? And what if Google came up with a similar system to find innovative ideas, would anyone really want their data anonymized in that case? Chances are they wouldn't, chances are they would like to participate in such a program, and perhaps in the future get paid for their ideas, or get a small stipend, royalty, or kudos for their innovative ideas and concepts.

It's not that I wish to suggest that we should by spying on the American people, but since we already are (NSA) and I think everyone knows that, maybe we should start looking for the good guys, as well as the bad guys? Indeed, I hope you will take this thought on a philosophical basis, and please consider what I've said here today.

Lance Winslow is the Founder of the Online Think Tank, a diverse group of achievers, experts, innovators, entrepreneurs, thinkers, futurists, academics, dreamers, leaders, and general all around brilliant minds. Lance Winslow hopes you've enjoyed today's discussion and topic. http://www.WorldThinkTank.net - Have an important subject to discuss, contact Lance Winslow.




Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Should-Corporate-Think-Tanks-Scan-IT-Logs,-and-Data-Mine-for-Innovative-Ideas?&id=5974141