Simple Steps to Find an Article Writing Service

Many businesses understand the importance of content marketing and quality web content writing. However, some businesses are simply too busy and don’t have the resources to complete this work on their own. These companies either suffer the consequences of not having a solid online presence or they hire an article writing service to help them. Hiring a service that matches you with a quality content writer will help your business succeed online without costing a lot of your time, effort or money.

Check Their Background

A good article writing service will have a solid background that shows you their expertise in the area of web content writing. While the service is capable of telling you more about their background when you speak with a representative, it can also be useful to do some of the research on your own. Look for reviews of their services and look over the work they have completed for their own website, blog and other marketing materials. If a company is dedicated to their work, they will put the work into helping their own company, as well as yours.

In addition to checking into the background of the service itself, you should find out as much as you can about the content writer with whom you will be working. Look for someone who has a proven track record of success with their work. There are plenty of amateurs on the Internet who feel they can sufficiently string words together to please their clients. You need someone who can write on a college level and provide you with the quality you deserve.

Ask for Examples

Actions speak much louder than words. As you consider which article writing service you want to hire for your web content writing, make sure you ask them for examples of the work they have already performed, particularly within your industry. This will give you a clear picture of what they will be able to do for you. For instance, if you hire them to write your blog posts, seeing examples of their press releases or white papers will not give you the evidence you need to make your decision.

Do They Format Their Work?

One of the biggest factors in the success of your content marketing is how well your content writer formats the work. Subheadings are particularly important for your blog posts and other web content writing because it breaks up the text and allows readers to scan the piece to determine if they want to read it or not. Hyperlinks, bold text, italics and other features are important to formatting. If the article writing service isn’t able to make your content look great, it isn’t worth your time or your money to invest in their work. Make sure you ask about the type of formatting they use and let them know if you have any preferences.

Evaluate Turnaround Time

When you have a content writer working on content for your site, your blog or other marketing materials, you need to know how fast you can expect the work. Some companies claim they can consistently turn your work around in as little as 24 hours and maintain a high level of quality. While this may be possible, it certainly isn’t typical. However, a good article writing service should be able to submit work to you in less than seven days, giving you the content you need quickly. If you are working with them on a consistent basis, this can mean receiving new content daily.

Get a Price Quote

The final important piece to the puzzle is to find out how much the company charges. Make sure you find a company that can create a custom package just for your business. They may offer a package that fits your needs, but if not, they should be happy to work with you to find an alternative that works with your needs and your budget. Remember, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get what you need.

An article writing service can be the perfect way to get the content you need without spending your own time and resources on this important task. When you take the time to find a content writer who has the experience necessary to complete quality work for you on a regular basis, you can boost your content marketing and see the results you are looking for.

Do you need help with your content marketing plan? Contact us to find out what our article writing service can offer.

Source:http://www.iwebcontent.com/simple-steps-to-find-an-article-writing-service/

Basic web scraping and data visualization using Google Spreadsheets

Google Spreadsheets provides a free, one-stop solution for journalists and researchers to retrieve tabular data from a web page, visualize the data, and embed the visualizations in a news or research report.

There are times when a journalist or researcher needs to incorporate visualized data in a report, and the data reside on a third-party website, in the form of a table. It is tedious and time-consuming to manually copy/paste the table, take care of any formatting issues, find a way to visualize the data, and upload the visualizations somewhere on the web for sharing and embedding.

With a free Google account, in three steps, we can create a spreadsheet, let the spreadsheet retrieve data in that table, perform various visualizations with the retrieved data, and then share the visualizations through different venues.

Step 1: Retrieve (scrape) tabular data

Google Spreadsheets provides a large collection of “functions” that do various things. This tutorial is based on one particular function that retrieves tabular data on a web page; for other spreadsheet functions, please refer to the Google Spreadsheet function list.

Let’s say that in a report about U.S. population, we want to quote state-by-state population data, in the form of an interactive chart, off of the Wikipedia list of U.S. states, which is a table with 12 columns and dozens of rows.

With a new blank spreadsheet, type in the A1 cell (the upper-left cell) the following function code:

This formula tells Google Spreadsheets to go to the said web page, look for tables on that page, and fetch data in the second table. Once I hit the enter key, in a few moments, the blank spreadsheet is populated with data as shown in the screenshot below:

U.S. population

A few notes about this step:

    To scrape data from any other page, copy that web address and paste it within the quotation marks.

    For that number “2″ in the formula – a web page may contain several tables; some are visible, some invisible. If you don’t know how to read HTML source codes and pinpoint the exact table you want to target, then start with 1, and work your way up until the spreadsheet returns the data you want.

    You cannot edit this spreadsheet as it is dynamically linked to the source on that Wiki page. If you delete a column or cell, the spreadsheet will refresh itself with the deleted contents back in place.

    If you do need to edit the data, for instance to create a customized chart of selected columns/rows, you need to make a copy of the spreadsheet. Remember, when you copy/paste to a new spreadsheet, choose edit>paste special>paste values only, so that the new spreadsheet is not linked to the source.

Step 2: Visualize data

Google Spreadsheets provides various visualization tools that we can choose and customize to suit our needs.

For instance, I want to visualize and compare the 2012 estimated population of the top-10 states. To do that, I need to specify the range of cells for the visualization; in this case, it is columns C and D, from row 1 down to row 11 (we need to include the header in row 1).

This range is thus C1:D11, which is a standard way to specify spreadsheet ranges.

(Note: read a Goggle Spreadsheet tutorial for working with cell range and other spreadsheet features)

On the spreadsheet menu bar, click on the “Insert chart” button (third from right); in the Chart Editor pop-up window, there are three tabs where we can customize the chart:

    chart-editorUnder the Start tab, change the data range to Sheet1!C1:D11; leave other options as is, and make sure “use row 1 as headers” is checked. Based on the data type, the spreadsheets has a few recommended charts; I selected the bar chart.

    Click the Chart tab and explore other types of charts; charts not compatible with the current data set are not available (grayed out).

    Click the Customize tab; here, among others, give the chart a title, and scroll down to change the default names of the vertical axis and the horizontal axis.

    Click Insert and the chart will be shown on top of the spreadsheet; click upper-right corner of the chart window, click the drop-down menu and choose “move to own sheet.” The chart will be shown in a separate sheet with a default name of “Chart 1.”

Step 3: Share chart visualizations

By default, the spreadsheet is private, meaning it is only visible to its creator. For others to view our chart, we need to change the sharing settings: Click on the blue “Share” button on the upper-right corner; in the pop-up window, under “who has access,” click on “change” next to the “private” option, choose either “public on the web” or “anyone with the link,”  click Save then Done.

Click File>Publish to the web; in the pop-up window, under “Get a link to the published data,” there are a few options:

    Click in the first box and you will see a group of options for how you can share the data/chart. For our purpose, we want to embed the interactive chart in this blog post, so I selected “HTML to embed in a page.”

    Click in the “All sheets” box and choose “Chart 1,” which is the one that holds the chart.

In the next box, select and copy the codes, paste them to the HTML editor of a blog post or web page, and an interactive chart will be shown as the one below; notice that in the original codes, the default dimensions are 500 pixels wide and 300 pixels tall; I changed it to 650*450 for display in this blog post.

It should be noted that in some browsers, an embedded chart may have unsightly scroll bars along the right and the bottom borders. I have not been able to find a fix, but we can always embed a chart image which is automatically generated and doesn’t have scroll bars. All we need to do is to click “publish chart” on the sheet that holds the chart; in the pop-up window, select “image” as the publish format, copy the link and paste it to a blog post or web page.

Source:http://www.mulinblog.com/basic-web-scraping-data-visualization-using-google-spreadsheets/

Data Cleansing Services Launched by WinPure

The new range of services are aimed at companies and individuals who have more complex needs or simply do not have the time to use our award-winning data cleansing software.

The WinPure Data Cleansing Service is available to clean, suppress and enhance consumer or business data. Featuring pay-as-you-go pricing so you only pay for what you need. WinPure can check your data against the latest UK Royal Mail PAF file and the National Change of Address (NCOA) database to determine if any of the individuals or companies/organizations in the database have relocated, and will update the database with new addresses as needed. Also included are checks against the Bereavement Register, MPS and TPS.

For names and addresses, the data cleansing service will ensure that your list or database doesn’t contain duplicate records and all your records in your file are up to date and accurate, and are maintaining the addresses in the Royal Mails standard format..

By using the data cleansing service it will also ensure businesses and consumers stay compliant with the Data Protection Act by ensuring that the data they hold is current and accurate. Businesses using this service will also help protect the environment and their bottom line by avoiding waste when sending out duplicate or unwanted mailings.

WinPure can undertake bureau work on either a one-off basis or as a regular service. For more information on the data cleansing services visit  and ensure you maximise your business performance in future with clean, accurate and up-to-data data.

About WinPure

WinPure are a worldwide leading provider of data quality and data cleansing software solutions that are powerful, simple to use, inexpensive and most importantly can be used by anyone rather than just IT specialists or data cleansing experts. Businesses around the world are now using WinPure software to help improve the quality of their information, helping them to increase profitability through more accurate data, and reducing costs by eliminating duplications, spelling errors and mistakes. WinPure products are relied upon by thousands of international companies, non profit & government agencies, educational organizations and individuals in over 40 countries from around the world.

Source:http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/data-cleansing-services-launched-by-winpure-286331.htm

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Source:http://www.escortlyfe.com/showthread.php?tid=57073

Simple Steps to Find an Article Writing Service

Many businesses understand the importance of content marketing and quality web content writing. However, some businesses are simply too busy and don’t have the resources to complete this work on their own. These companies either suffer the consequences of not having a solid online presence or they hire an article writing service to help them. Hiring a service that matches you with a quality content writer will help your business succeed online without costing a lot of your time, effort or money.

Check Their Background

A good article writing service will have a solid background that shows you their expertise in the area of web content writing. While the service is capable of telling you more about their background when you speak with a representative, it can also be useful to do some of the research on your own. Look for reviews of their services and look over the work they have completed for their own website, blog and other marketing materials. If a company is dedicated to their work, they will put the work into helping their own company, as well as yours.

In addition to checking into the background of the service itself, you should find out as much as you can about the content writer with whom you will be working. Look for someone who has a proven track record of success with their work. There are plenty of amateurs on the Internet who feel they can sufficiently string words together to please their clients. You need someone who can write on a college level and provide you with the quality you deserve.

Ask for Examples

Actions speak much louder than words. As you consider which article writing service you want to hire for your web content writing, make sure you ask them for examples of the work they have already performed, particularly within your industry. This will give you a clear picture of what they will be able to do for you. For instance, if you hire them to write your blog posts, seeing examples of their press releases or white papers will not give you the evidence you need to make your decision.

Do They Format Their Work?

One of the biggest factors in the success of your content marketing is how well your content writer formats the work. Subheadings are particularly important for your blog posts and other web content writing because it breaks up the text and allows readers to scan the piece to determine if they want to read it or not. Hyperlinks, bold text, italics and other features are important to formatting. If the article writing service isn’t able to make your content look great, it isn’t worth your time or your money to invest in their work. Make sure you ask about the type of formatting they use and let them know if you have any preferences.

Evaluate Turnaround Time

When you have a content writer working on content for your site, your blog or other marketing materials, you need to know how fast you can expect the work. Some companies claim they can consistently turn your work around in as little as 24 hours and maintain a high level of quality. While this may be possible, it certainly isn’t typical. However, a good article writing service should be able to submit work to you in less than seven days, giving you the content you need quickly. If you are working with them on a consistent basis, this can mean receiving new content daily.

Get a Price Quote

The final important piece to the puzzle is to find out how much the company charges. Make sure you find a company that can create a custom package just for your business. They may offer a package that fits your needs, but if not, they should be happy to work with you to find an alternative that works with your needs and your budget. Remember, you don’t have to spend a lot of money to get what you need.

An article writing service can be the perfect way to get the content you need without spending your own time and resources on this important task. When you take the time to find a content writer who has the experience necessary to complete quality work for you on a regular basis, you can boost your content marketing and see the results you are looking for.

Do you need help with your content marketing plan? Contact us to find out what our article writing service can offer.

Source:http://www.iwebcontent.com/simple-steps-to-find-an-article-writing-service/

Tools for Data Scraping and Visualization

Over the last few weeks I co-taught a short-course on data scraping and data presentation for.  It was a pleasure to get a chance to teach with Ethan Zuckerman (my boss) and interact with the creative group of students! You can peruse the syllabus outline if you like.

In my Data Therapy work I don’t usually introduce tools, because there are loads of YouTube tutorials and written tutorials.  However, while co-teaching a short-course for incoming students in the Comparative Media Studies program here at MIT, I led two short “lab” sessions on tools for data scraping, interrogation, and visualization.

There are a myriad of tools that support these efforts, so I was forced to pick just a handle to introduce to these students.  I wanted to share the short lists of tools I choose to share.

Data Scraping:

As much as possible, avoid writing code!  Many of these tools can help you avoid writing software to do the scraping.  There are constantly new tools being built, but I recommend these:

   1.Copy/Paste: Never forget the awesome power of copy/paste! There are many times when an hour of copying and pasting will be faster than learning any sort of new tool!
  
   2.Import.io: Still nascent, but this is a radical re-thinking of how you scrape.  Point and click to train their scraper.  It’s very early, and buggy, but on many simple webpages it works well!
  
   3.Regular Expressions: Install a text editor like Sublime Text and you get the power of regular expressions (which I call “Super Find and Replace”).  It lets you define a pattern and find it in any large document.  Sure the pattern definition is cryptic, but learning it is totally worth it (here’s an online playground).
  
   4.Jquery in the browser: Install the bookmarklet, and you can add the JQuery javascript library to any webpage you are viewing.  From there you can use a basic understanding of javascript and the Javascript console (in most browsers) to pull parts of a webpage into an array.
  
   5.ScraperWiki: There are a few things this makes really easy – getting recent tweets, getting twitter followers, and a few others.  Otherwise this is a good engine for software coding.
  
   6.Software Development: If you are a coder, and the website you need to scrape has javascript and logins and such, then you might need to go this route (ugh).  If so, here’s a functioning example of a scraper built in Python (with Beautiful Soup and Mechanize).  I would use Watir if you want to do this in Ruby.

Data Interrogation and Visualization:

There are even more tools that help you here.  I picked a handful of single-purpose tools, and some generic ones to share.

   1.Tabula: There are  few PDF-cleaning tools, but this one has worked particularly well for me.  If your data is in a PDF, and selectable, then I recommend this! (disclosure: the Knight Foundation funds much of my paycheck, and contributed to Tabula’s development as well)

   2.OpenRefine: This data cleaning tool lets you do things like cluster rows in your data that are spelled similarly, look for correlations at a high level, and more!  The School of Data has written well about this – read their OpenRefine handbook.

   3.Wordle: As maligned as word clouds have been, I still believe in their role as a proxy for deep text analysis.  They give a nice visual representation of how frequently words appear in quotes, writing, etc.

   4.Quartz ChartBuilder: If you need to make clean and simple charts, this is the tool for you. Much nicer than the output of Excel.

   5.TimelineJS: Need an online timeline?  This is an awesome tool. Disclosure: another Knight-funded project.

   6.Google Fusion Tables: This tool has empowered loads of folks to create maps online.  I’m not a big user, but lots of folks recommend it to me.

   7.TileMill: Google maps isn’t the only way to make a map.  TileMill lets you create beautiful interactive maps that fit your needs. Disclosure: another Knight-funded project.

   8.Tableau Public: Tableau is a much nicer way to explore your data than Excel pivot tables.  You can drag and drop columns onto a grid and it suggests visualizations that might be revealing in your attempts to find stories.

I hope those are helpful in your data scraping and story-finding adventures!

Source:http://datatherapy.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/tools-for-data-scraping-and-presentation/

Role of web scraper in extraction of data

Web harvesting, also referred as web scraping or web data extraction is an approach employed to take out large amount of data from a website. Data from third party sites on web can usually be viewed using a web browser only. Examples are data listings at real estate websites, yellow pages directories, industrial inventory sites, social networks, shopping sites and many more. Most websites do not offer the functionality to save a copy of the data which they display to your local storage. The only alternative then is to physically copy and paste the data to a local file in your computer, which is a very tricky and tedious job that can take so many hours to complete. Web Scraping is the method of automating this procedure, so that in place of manually copy the data from website, the web scraper will performs the same task within a short span of the time.

Web scraper is software or a scraping tool used to extract data from website in a very easy and hassle-free manner. Web scrapers are programs that are capable to collect information from the Internet. They will be competent to go online, access the content of your website, and then drag the data points and placing them in a work or structured database or in spreadsheet. Many services and companies make use of this software to scrap the Web, such as to carry out online research, tracking changes to Web content and comparing prices. The web scraper will interrelate with websites in the similar way as your web browsers. But in place of displaying the data served by the website on screen, the web scraper saves the desired data from the web page to a local database or file.

The web scraper works in the similar manner as web indexing is done using a web robot, which is the method that is employed by the majority of search engines. This software is very user friendly as the main aim of this tool is to make the procedure of web data extraction easier. If you wish to make use of this tool and want to buy it, then there are various websites that offer this software for individuals who wish to extract data from internet. So what are you waiting for? Simply go online and search for the most reputable and trusted website as per your needs.

Source:http://justarticlessite.com/role-of-web-scraper-in-extraction-of-data.html