Smarter Web scraping from Connotate

Connotate has significantly upgraded its technology with the introduction of Connotate4, which, the company explains, simplifies and streamlines the “Webdata” extraction process and ensures full coverage of a website. It adds that the key component of Connotate4 is a custom browser that uses the Webkit engine powering such browsers as Safari and Chrome.

Connotate states its core technology is based on visual abstraction techniques that allow machines to view Web pages as humans do, enabling high-volume extraction of data from Web pages to be automated through a point-and-click interface. Further, it says, because “agents” are not relying on HTML code to find the data to extract, they can easily adjust to moderate site changes without breaking.

In addition to the custom browser at the center of Connotate4, the company highlights the following capabilities:

    Inline data transformation within the agent development process is a powerful new capability that will ease data integration and customization.

    Enhanced change detection with highlighting can be requested during the agent development process via a point-and-click checkbox, enabling highlighted change detection that is illustrated at the character, word or phrase level.

    Parallel extraction tasks make it faster to complete tasks, allowing even more scalability for even larger extractions.

    Build-and-expand capabilities turn the act of reusing a single agent for related extraction tasks a one-click event, allowing for faster Agent creation.

    A simplified user interface enables simplified and faster Agent development.

The new release allows Connotate’s intelligent extraction Agents to access about 95 percent of Webdata. And the adaptive platform can quickly accommodate new Web properties and technologies as they emerge, providing the ability to scale far beyond the competitive landscape. Existing customers of Connotate’s hosted solution will not be affected by the introduction of this new platform. On-premises customers will be migrated on an as-needed basis.

Source: http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/News/News/Smarter-Web-scraping-from-Connotate-96637.aspx

Is Big Data right for your business?

Today, you can find “news” about Big Data just about everywhere. It’s being talked about in print magazines, newspapers, and all over the web. But, with so much news out there, how can you know if Big Data is right for your business, and, if so, how you should implement?

First, you need to have a working understanding of what Big Data is, and not the popular Cliff Notes version of the definition either. We’re talking about a real, working understanding. Big Data is a term used to describe technologies that allow companies to parse and catalogue datasets that are far too large to manage with conventional data gathering and mining tools.

One popular myth about Big Data is that it has only been around for “a couple” of years. Not so. In fact, major industries such as healthcare and entertainment have been using Big Data to “crack the code” for their production and marketing departments for years. So, we now have several years of a working understanding of how Big Data can work, and a proven track record in several major industries.

What IS true about Big Data is that many companies have just begun to take a serious look at it over the past two years. The world, we all realize, is changing. Smartphones are changing the way people use the internet and that, in turn, is changing how people shop, how they interact, and how they make the majority of their day to day decisions.

It’s a quantum leap forward in a short period of time, and that has many people wondering, and not a few CEOs worried. Is it too early to buy-in for their business, or, if they wait too long, will they be left behind, sacrificing market share to a more daring competitor? This conundrum is, in many ways, not unlike questions technology has forced on businesses before.

In the early days of computing, many companies wondered if they should jump on board, or keep doing things the old fashioned way. Well, we all know how that turned out.

Then, Jeff Bezos came along with an idea that became Amazon. Many companies, particularly in the publishing and entertainment industries, laughed him off the same way record companies scoffed at iTunes. Again, we all know how that turned out.

Bottom line? You will not know if Big Data will work for you unless you dig in, take it very seriously, and do what you can to learn all you can.

Source:http://www.jewocity.com/blog/is-big-data-right-for-your-business/12331