Screen Scraping: Boon or Bane?
August 22, 2011
Everyone who has ever thought about information extraction has considered screen-scraping software. Marco Albanico Inbound MLM does the legwork by explaining, “What You Need To Know Regarding Lead Screen Scraping Software.”
Clever folks can take content from a Web site which some of those original publishers assume will be “safe” from content predators.
We learned the following from this article:
[In addition] to streamlining content, these businesses gather ingenious information, [w]hich happens to be an important resource for just about any company or private group’s use. [It’s] not just for collecting and refining content, you may also take advantage of collected information within an organized form for reasons of intelligence, study, and storage for future use.
Mozenda is the leading software, as proclaimed by users on websites like theeasybee.com. For anyone completely new to Web extraction, they offer to setup the first project for free. They also convert your web data into a myriad of different formats.
Kapow Technologies offers the ability to extract without any coding, using a point and click technology. Their partnership with IBM has enabled them to produce a Web 2.0 Expo application for the iPhone in less than three hours.
The best suggestion Marco Albanico offers is to take advantage of the free trials that these two services and others advertise on their websites. Why limit yourself before exploring all of your options if they’re free?
Megan Feil, August 22, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
Alerts When Search Is Hit and Miss
August 21, 2011
Search seems like the answer to Every Man’s information needs. It is not. Not by a long shot.
If organizations cannot search by individual as to who needs information, they will invariably push content onto a whole group of people. AFV-News reported “U.S. Army Deploys AtHoc IWSAlerts Emergency Mass Notification System.”
Businesses, schools, universities, and military groups all employ the usage of emergency alerts, providing mass notifications to everyone in their system. Fort Jackson brags that their AtHoc alerts span 25,000 personnel and dependents.
AtHoc IWS Alerts offer control from a unified Web-based console, which allows Fort Jackson to send alerts to cell phones, landlines, smart phones, SMS text and email. It’s not just Fort Jackson—AtHoc services more than 1.5 million Department of Defense, more than any other provider.
We learned about AtHoc’s capabilities and infrastructure from the AFV-News article:
[The] system integrates with the post’s existing Internet Protocol network services, which means reduced infrastructure and maintenance costs. Personnel accountability is accomplished through the bi-directional capability, allowing responses to notifications in real-time. Network alert delivery and response can be tracked, ensuring that targeted recipients have received and responded to alerts.
While alerts for dangerous situations and testing can save lives and are obviously a necessity, mass alert systems also unfortunately end up in too many unnecessary inboxes.
Megan Feil, August 21, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com
ZyLAB eDiscovery Goes to Extremes
August 19, 2011
The field of eDiscovery is growing, with ZyLAB and Brainware both leading the pack in terms of the marketing buzz that flows through our Overflight intelligence service. Chris Dale reports on evaluating eDiscovery services in the most extreme circumstances in, “ZyLAB eDiscovery tools as a Prototype for Removing Discovery Bottlenecks.” He writes:
The . . . extreme in eDiscovery terms, apart from the ability to handle very large volumes, is a war crimes investigation and tribunal. The data sources are often far removed from the neat corporate environment of servers and laptops; the events took place in circumstances where data preservation was the last priority; the required standard of proof is a criminal one.
Underscoring this argument is the idea that if eDiscovery tools can handle the disorganization and intense pressure of a war crimes tribunal, the same tool can perform beautifully in the more predictable and ordered environment of the corporate and financial world. This logic seems sound. If the product is effective for firms in the context of war crimes tribunals, the same product is likely to increase the speed and productivity of firms operating in a much more controlled environment.
Our view. Work flow is a hot sector, and it seems to be paying dividends for ZyLAB and for Brainware, a firm pushing into this sector with what looks like increasing determination.
Emily Rae Aldridge, August 19, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
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