Cloud-based Business ideas

Are you interested in starting a cloud based business? If yes, then below are the top ten cloud based business ideas you can start from home.

Wikipedia defines cloud computing as “internet-based computing whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand.”

Given the explanation above, popular platforms like Slideshare, Skype, Gmail, YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, Amazon AWS and Cloudfront, Dropbox and WordPress can reasonably be included in a list of cloud applications; because they all hold your data (presentation slides, emails, videos, blog posts, etc), so you don’t have to worry about them.

Cloud computing provides a much more reliable alternative to keeping files on your own computer; a mode of storage that has been rendered insecure due to the emergence of various types of viruses and other threats to information security.

On the surface, cloud computing has many advantages over traditional methods of data storage. For example, if you store your data in a cloud-based retrieval system, you will be able to get back your data from any location that has internet access. And you wouldn’t need to carry around your physical storage device or use the same computer to save and retrieve your information. In fact, in the absence of security concerns, you could even allow other people to access the data, thereby turning a personal project into collaborative effort.

Like any other innovation that offers huge solutions for individuals and businesses, cloud computing has created huge opportunities for entrepreneurs who have a knack for computers and ICT. If you have a solid background in ICT and in-depth knowledge of cloud computing, then starting a cloud-based business might just be a life-changing business move for you. Without wasting time, below are 10 cloud-based business ideas that you can exploit for long-term income:

Top 10 Cloud-based Business ideas

1. Cloud computing consulting

Many individuals and businesses are becoming aware of the benefits of cloud computing and its advantages over traditional storage methods. But most people feel completely at sea when it comes to understanding how to move their systems and files onto the cloud storage platform. You can make a lot of money helping such individuals and businesses migrate to the cloud.

2. Tutoring

For security and other reasons, many individuals and businesses would fret at the idea of hiring a freelance contractor to help them with their migration to cloud. Rather, such individuals would prefer to learn how it works, so that they can handle the migration themselves.

Similarly, many businesses would prefer hiring you to train their in-house staff on the application of cloud computing. So, you can make a lot of money from just teaching people how to apply cloud computing to their businesses.

3. File hosting

If you have the required background and expertise, then you can make a lot of money by setting up your own platform for helping people hold their files in the cloud. That is, you can set up a cloud storage solution like Dropbox, Google Doc, Amazon AWS and Evernote, and charge people for helping them hold their files.

4. Cloud platform engineering

With a solid background in software or systems engineering, you can make money working as a cloud platform engineer. This position goes beyond helping individuals and businesses migrate to cloud; it also involves actually handling all of the technicalities and intricacies involved. After the initial setup process, you would be called on at intervals for maintenance and routine checks. And of course, you will get paid each time.

5. Cloud computing technologist

This involves working with companies that provide cloud-computing solutions. As a cloud-computing technologist, you will work with the company’s engineers to set up the company’s platform and packages. You will also help to set a user-friendly interface for their customers.

6. Cloud OS developer

A cloud OS developer analyzes, designs, programs, debugs, and modifies software enhancements and/or new products used in local, networked, or internet-related computer programs, primarily for end users.

As a cloud OS developer, you will also be required to test applications and interact with users to define system requirements and necessary modifications. You will earn a lot of money working for companies as an independent contractor. And there is no limit to the number of companies you can work with.

7. Cloud automation engineering

Working as an automation engineer, you will be responsible for deep automation of cloud services that will enable the company’s software development team to rapidly prototype, build, and deploy product offering to their customers. You will need to deeply understand cloud architectures and arrangements.

8. Cloud software engineering – This simply involves developing software that will ease the use of the cloud platform.

9. Web hosting

Yes, the popular web hosting is an application of cloud computing, since you will help individuals and businesses hold their web files and keep the secure. So you can set up you  own web hosting company and make money.

10. Blogging (on cloud)

Because many people are yet to fully understand how cloud works, you can make a lot of money in the long term by starting a blog that discusses everything about cloud computing.

Source:http://www.mytopbusinessideas.com/cloud-based/

Screen scraping: How to profit from your rival's data

Screen scraping might sound like something you do to the car windows on a frosty morning, but on the internet it means copying all the data on a target website.

"Every corporation does it, and if they tell you they're not they're lying," says Francis Irving, head of Scraper Wiki, which makes tools that help many different organisations grab and organise data.

To copy a document on a computer, you highlight the text using a mouse or keyboard command such as Control A, Control C. Copying a website is a bit trickier because of the way the information is formatted and stored.

Typically, copying that information is a computationally intensive task that means visiting a website repeatedly to get every last character and digit.

If the information on that site changes rapidly, then scrapers will need to visit more often to ensure nothing is missed.

And that is one of the reasons why many websites actively try to stop screen scraping because of the heavy toll it can take on their computational resources. Servers can be slowed down and bandwidth soaked up by the scrapers scouring every webpage for data.

"Up to 40% of the data traffic visiting our clients sites is made up of scrapers," says Mathias Elvang, head of security firm Sentor, which makes tools to thwart the data-grabbing programs.

"They can be spending a lot of money for infrastructure to serve the scrapers."

Scottish Grand National Betting aggregators often target the odds offered on particular sports events

And that's the problem. Instead of serving customers, a firm's web resources are helping computer programs that have no intention of spending any money.

Data loss

What's worse is that those scrapers are likely to be working for your rivals, says Mike Gaffney, former head of IT security at Ladbrokes, who spent a lot of his time at the bookmakers combating scrapers.

"Ladbrokes was blocking about one million IP addresses on a daily basis," he says, describing the scale of the scraping effort directed against the site.

Many of those scrapers were being run by unscrupulous rivals abroad that did not want to pay to get access to the data feed Ladbrokes provides of its latest odds, he says.

Instead, they got it for free via a scraper and then combined it with similar data scraped from other sites to give visitors a rounded picture of all the odds offered by lots of different bookmakers.

"It's important that your pricing information is kept as close to the chest as possible away from the competitor but is freely available to the punter," says Mr Gaffney.

The key, he said, was blocking the scraping traffic but letting the legitimate gamblers through.

The sites most often targeted by scrapers are those that offer time-sensitive data. Gambling firms offering odds on sports events are popular targets as are airlines and other travel firms.

The problem, says Shay Rapaport, co-founder of anti-scraping firm Fireblade, is determining whether a visitor is a human looking for a cheap flight or an automated program, or bot, intent on sucking all the data away,

"It's growing because it's easy to scrape and there are so many tools out there on the web," he says.

The best scraping programs mimic human behaviour and spread the work out among lots of different computers. That makes it hard to separate PC from person, he adds.

In many countries scraping is not illegal, adds Mr Rapaport, so scrupulous and unscrupulous businesses alike indulge in it.

House of Commons Scraping has helped make parliamentary debates and voting records more accessible

"A lot of big companies scrape content," he says. "Sometimes it's published on the web and re-packaged and sometimes it's just for internal use for business leads."

Talking heads

Frances Irving, head of ScraperWiki, says that not all of that grabbing of data is bad. There are legitimate uses to which it can be put.

For instance, says Mr Irving, good scraping tools can help to index and make sense of huge corpuses of data that would otherwise be hard to search and use.

Scrapers have been used to grab data from Hansard ,which publishes voting records of the UK's MPs and transcribes what they say in the Houses of Parliament.

"It's pretty uniform data because they have a style standard but it was done by humans so there's the odd mistake in it here and there," he says.

Scraping helped to organise all that information and get it online so voters can keep an eye on their elected representatives.

In addition, he says, it can be used to get around bureaucratic and organisational barriers that would otherwise stymie a data-gathering project.

And, he says, it's worth remembering that the rise of the web has been driven by two big scrapers - Google and Facebook.

In the early days the search engine scraped the web to catalogue all the information being put online and made it accessible. More recently, Facebook has used scraping to help people fill out their social network.

"Google and Facebook effectively grew up scraping," he says, adding that if there were significant restrictions on what data can be scraped then the web would look very different today.

Source:http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23988890

Hiring A Pro Air Duct Cleaning Service

When hiring a company that gives you air duct cleaning services you should use normal sense. Do some background investigation of the organizations you are thinking about. With the world-wide-web you can readily discover about any organisations you are looking at and uncover out if they have a history of enterprise complaints. You ought to ask any firm you are thinking about hiring questions about your air conditioning technique and make confident they are knowledgeable about their perform.

Are they licensed? A large number of states call for suppliers that clean air ducts to be licensed, if they should be and are not then this is a definite red flag. It’s also extremely critical to acquire an estimate in writing and inform the business that any significant adjustments in what they charge desires to be authorized by you prior to they continue functioning.

As with all factors of household repair and maintenance cleaning out dirty ducts is critical. Allowing ductwork to turn into excessively dusty can have a damaging influence on your health and could possibly lessen the life of your air conditioning method. Anytime contemplating hiring any corporation to work on your dwelling make certain you are informed about them. Do a small research, ask them concerns, and obtain estimates in writing. Any respected company ought to be content to talk with you about the work they will be performing as properly as give you a written estimate.

Hiring a organization that gives air duct cleaning services is just like hiring any other contractor, as lengthy as they are a reputable enterprise they really should present you with high quality service. So if you discover a lot of dust about your air conditioning vents don’t ignore the difficulty or place it off until it gets to be out of hand. Employ a enterprise that presents air duct cleaning solutions to assistance protect the wellness of your loved ones and the overall performance of your air conditioner.

Source:http://www.tampabaycleaning.com/176-hiring-a-pro-air-duct-cleaning-service-4

Basic Rules to Use for Your Data Entry Business

Setting up a data entry business from home sounds like a daunting prospect, but with a few basic requirements in place and the knowledge of what to look out for, it is much easier than it sounds.

So What is Required?

Essentially, all a person needs to get started with a data entry business is a computer with a regular Internet connection, MS Word, Excel and/ or Access and an ability to type reasonably quickly and, naturally, accurately. An Adobe reader to view or work on PDF files may also be necessary.

Then, of course, they will have to find work. This is where it gets a little more difficult, because many of the myriads of data entry opportunities advertised on the Internet will ultimately turn out to be elaborate scams set up to deceive people into handing over their money.

This should not, however, discourage an individual from trying. There are also many genuine, well paid jobs out there, and it is simply a matter of sorting the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. Knowing what to look out for and how to check out potential providers of work will protect an individual looking for work from becoming a victim to scam artists.

Finding Data Entry Work

By following a set of basic rules, it will be possible to avoid scams and get started without major pitfalls and costly mistakes. They are basically just three simple tips on checking out a potential person or company offering work.

Rule Number One - Avoiding Programs

The first rule is never to get involved with people, companies or so-called programmes offering work for which the individual looking for work has to pay to start with. Real employers pay for work, they don't ask people to pay them!

Let's face it, nobody would expect to pay to get a job interview on their High Street or on an industrial estate. The same applies to Internet based work. If it is genuine, no advance payment will be required.

Rule Number Two - Checking the Company

Even if there doesn't appear to be an obvious problem with a potential employer, the best advice is to check them out thouroughly before submitting any work. Some companies have been known to accept the work and then fail to pay for it.

Although this is comparatively rare, it does happen and a quick enquiry at one or both of these two websites: Better Business Bureau, referred to as the BBB for short, or the second site, Small Business Administration, known as the SBA, will reveal if a company can be trusted to pay on time.

Posting a query on a public forum can also be an excellent resource when trying to determine the authenticity of a company. If there is a problem, someone will know and respond to the query with a warning.

Rule Number Three - Checking the Work

An additional way of checking includes taking a good look at the way in which the provided work to be done is presented. A good, genuine employer will detail how they want the finished work to look, including details on file formats, formatting of text, the deadline for submission and rates of pay.

File formats usually include DOCS or RTF, excel or occasionally access files, PDF, HTML or SGML. Often the work is provided in the actual format it should be returned in.

The applicable rates of pay should equally be outlined clearly, usually the rates are per quantity submitted, rather than consisting of fantastic promises of easy money. Data entry, like any other work, is not easy money; earnings have to be worked for. Anyone promising otherwise can be regarded as dubious at best and should be double-checked, before falling into a trap.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Basic-Rules-to-Use-for-Your-Data-Entry-Business&id=6558026

Benefits Of Article Writing Services

Even if you are a good author, you could want to think about employing post creating providers for your on the web company. High quality articles improvement needs treasured time and talent, and making use of post writing companies makes it possible for you and your personnel to focus on other critical aspects of your business. When you allow other people take care of branding, search engine optimization, and consumer-friendly articles generation, you can dedicate more time to building your merchandise, assisting your customers, and every little thing else that sets your company apart from the competitors. Here are some of the positive aspects of large-quality report creating solutions.

Readable, Intriguing Articles or blog posts

No matter what product you promote or support you provide Jeff Carter Jersey, your website needs to cater to your clients. You need to have articles that not only pitches a sale, but that readers will really engage prolonged enough to develop interest in your business. Fantastic write-up writing solutions specialize in delivering grammatically ideal, nicely-structured pieces which efficiently and entertainingly deliver your business's unique offering place. Retain the services of great writers, and you'll have far more time to really deliver on that place.

Branding, Authority, and a Loyal Readership

At a time when thousands of websites seem to supply the identical merchandise, solutions, and material, branding is crucial to your lengthy-term achievement. When folks visit your website, they want to see new, fresh material that delivers a message they have not currently read through tens or hundreds of times. They want something distinctive. Fantastic writers will set up the uniqueness of your enterprise by adapting to and additional building your website's fashion. They will also research your niche in buy to write articles with a tone that speaks right to your readers' deepest desires. By employing a fantastic content support, you can create yourself as an authority in your discipline and create a loyal group of readers who will ultimately turn out to be buyers.

Commitment and Professionalism

One of the largest difficulties with basic Search engine optimization and internet style firms is that they target on also a lot of projects and sub-projects at as soon as Drew Doughty Jersey, creating an overall item that is decent but unremarkable. They exemplify the "jack of all trades, master of none" clichA? and their customers endure simply because of it. On the other hand, a committed article writing services puts its total team's target into creating and editing superior posts for your website. Hiring a creating crew in addition to a net design service could expense a lot more in the brief phrase, but the impeccable articles you get will spend for itself hundreds of times more than with large site visitors and conversion prices.

Search engine optimisation Material that Converts

Numerous world wide web development companies appear at Search engine marketing and user-friendly content as totally separate entities. The dilemma with this mentality is that purely "search engine-pleasant" content articles are usually rife with uninteresting filler articles and unreadable, key phrase-stuffed sentences. To stay away from littering your stylish web site with this type of fluff , you need to have to have articles that is each highly readable and optimized for site visitors Jonathan Quick Jersey. Good article creating firms expertly weave key phrases and LSI terms into your messages to create articles or blog posts which will attain substantial search engine rankings and convert the readers who click on them.

Source:http://bpel.xml.org/blog/benefits-of-article-writing-services

Data journalism’s ‘secret weapon’, data newswires, and the newest data-scraping tools for journalists.

When investigative reporter and journalism instructor Chad Skelton needed help writing a curriculum for a data journalism course, he turned to NICAR-L, the email listerv for the National Institute of Computer Assisted Reporting, for advice.  Skelton says that virtually every data journalist in North America is plugged in to the NICAR listserv, making it data journalism’s “secret weapon.”

In 5 tips for a data journalism workflow, the online journalism blog advises newsrooms to find and tap into “data newswires” in the same way newsrooms have used traditional newswires like AP and Reuters.

The newest data-scraping tool for non-coding journalists, Import.io, launched in public beta this week. Import.io allows data scraping from any website, and can create a single searchable database using information from several sources.

South Africa hosted a two-day hackathon this week, which was the first Editor’s Lab hackathon held in Southern Africa. The event was organized by the Global Editor’s Network (GEN), the African Media Initiative (AMI) and Google.

And finally, Owen Thomas writes on readwrite.com that the media world has a lot to learn from technologists like Jeff Bezos and Keith Rabois.

Source:http://strata.oreilly.com/2013/09/data-journalisms-secret-weapon-data-newswires-and-the-newest-data-scraping-tools-for-journalists.html

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

The “Ultimate Guide to Web Scraping” is Now Available

I wrote an article on web scraping last winter that has since been viewed almost 100,000 times. Clearly there are people who want to learn about this stuff, so I decided I’d write a book.

A few months later, I’m happy to announce: The Ultimate Guide to Web Scraping.

No prior knowledge of web scraping is necessary to follow along — the book is designed to walk you from beginner to expert, honing your skills and helping you becomes a master craftsman in the art of web scraping.

The book talks about the reasons why web scraping is a valid way to harvest information — despite common complaints. It also examines various ways that information is sent from a website to your computer, and how you can intercept and parse it. We’ll also look at common traps and anti-scraping tactics and how you might be able to thwart them.

There are code samples in both Ruby and Python — I had to learn Ruby just so I could write the code samples! If anyone’s willing to translate the sample code into PHP or Javascript, I’ll give you a free copy of the book. Get in touch.

—

Check out the table of contents:

    Introduction to Web Scraping

    Web Scraping as a Legitimate Data Collection Tool

    Understand Web Technologies: A Brief Introduction to HTTP and the DOM

    Finding The Data: Discovering Your “API”

    Extracting the Data: Finding Structure in an HTML Document

    Sample Code to Get You Started

    Avoiding Common Scraping Traps

    Being a Good Web Scraping Citizen

As a special deal for my blog subscribers, get 20% off with the code BLOGSUB. That coupon code is only good for a limited time, so order your copy today!

Source: http://blog.hartleybrody.com/web-scraping-guide/

The “Ultimate Guide to Web Scraping” is Now Available

I wrote an article on web scraping last winter that has since been viewed almost 100,000 times. Clearly there are people who want to learn about this stuff, so I decided I’d write a book.

A few months later, I’m happy to announce: The Ultimate Guide to Web Scraping.

No prior knowledge of web scraping is necessary to follow along — the book is designed to walk you from beginner to expert, honing your skills and helping you becomes a master craftsman in the art of web scraping.

The book talks about the reasons why web scraping is a valid way to harvest information — despite common complaints. It also examines various ways that information is sent from a website to your computer, and how you can intercept and parse it. We’ll also look at common traps and anti-scraping tactics and how you might be able to thwart them.

There are code samples in both Ruby and Python — I had to learn Ruby just so I could write the code samples! If anyone’s willing to translate the sample code into PHP or Javascript, I’ll give you a free copy of the book. Get in touch.

—

Check out the table of contents:

    Introduction to Web Scraping

    Web Scraping as a Legitimate Data Collection Tool

    Understand Web Technologies: A Brief Introduction to HTTP and the DOM

    Finding The Data: Discovering Your “API”

    Extracting the Data: Finding Structure in an HTML Document

    Sample Code to Get You Started

    Avoiding Common Scraping Traps

    Being a Good Web Scraping Citizen

As a special deal for my blog subscribers, get 20% off with the code BLOGSUB. That coupon code is only good for a limited time, so order your copy today!

Source: http://blog.hartleybrody.com/web-scraping-guide/

Lawyers Records Data Entry

By outsourcing to our services, people are assured of quick and quality data services. Lawyers who are always busy upholding the law are not left behind when we provide our data entry services. By hiring us, lawyers are able to concentrate on their line of work and as a result save time from the hustle and bustle of huge amounts of paperwork.

Data Entry UK’s offer data scraping services, in which scrape following data.
- Lawyers Name
- Law Firm
- Address
- City, State, Country
- Phone, Fax
- Personal Email ID
- Website URL

As a specialization and profession in this field of data entry, our team of experts are able to provide the specific services that are tailored towards in making the lives of the lawyers a little more comfortable. We provide safe, reliable and secure services to our esteemed clients and when it comes to protecting the files of the lawyers, one should not worry. Personal or corporation information is secured and our qualified personell have trained to uphold the moral and ethical issues surrounding the business worlds.

Some of the lawyer services we offer include: lawyer document conversion which is specially suited to cater for the first hand consumption of the lawyers. Through the document management technology that we use we are able to provide clear reports that are easily comprehensible for the lawyers.

The benefits of using this technology are; lawyers are able to get and access the information anywhere, all that is required is a stable internet connection. This “access anywhere” can be used for lawyers even when in there are hearing proceedings in courts. There is full security and special sweeping search and queries which the lawyers can use without having any fears of hackers lurking over the internet.

Lawyer data management and conversion is another service that we provide. The team of experts we have are law-acquainted and well versed with on goings in world of law. Therefore, they are able to provide the necessary data capture and data conversion services that are designed for the lawyer’s consumption.

Source:http://www.data-entry-uk.co.uk/lawyers-records-data-entry.html

Interesting Database Scraping Case Survives Summary Judgment–Snap-On Business Solutions v. O’Neil

Snap-on is one of those cases that’s great because the court canvasses the various claims that come into play in the increasingly common scenario when someone accesses a computer or network to extract data following termination of (or outside of) a contractual relationship. (The practice of extracting data from a website is commonly known as ‘scraping’.) The court punts based on the existence of factual disputes, but the court’s order is well worth a read just because it lays out the issues and theories.

The background facts are straightforward. Mitsubishi hired Snap-on to build a database of parts data which Mitsubishi dealers could then access online. Mitsubishi provided the underlying documents and images (parts information) to Snap-on, who converted them and built a “searchable database with linked data and images.” At some point, Mitsubishi decided to move the parts database over to O’Neil, instead of Snap-on. When Mitsubishi asked for a copy of the database, Snap-on predictably declined. Snap-on told Mitsubishi that Mitsubishi could have the database, but would have to pay an extra fee. Meanwhile, O’Neil, Mitsubishi’s new vendor suggested that it could extract the data from Snap-on’s servers using O’Neil “scraper tool.” O’Neil ran the scraping program, and used log-ins provided by Mitsubishi in the process of gathering the data. According to testimony from Snap-on, O’Neil’s access of Snap-on’s website caused Snap-on’s website to “crash” in at least one instance.

Snap-on sued O’Neil (and interestingly not Mitsubishi) alleging Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trespass to chattels, unjust enrichment, breach of contract, copyright infringement, and misappropriation of trade secrets.

Computer Fraud and Abuse Act: The key question on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act claim was whether O’Neil’s access of the website was “without authorization.” The court held that the underlying agreement between Mitsubishi and Snap-on did not clearly resolve the question of whether Mitsubishi could authorize O’Neil to access Snap-on’s website and servers and, whether even assuming Mitsubishi had this ability, Mitsubishi somehow lost it.

I think the court came to the correct conclusion on whether the access was without authorization. There’s a split of authority in the employment context as to whether an employee’s access to the employer’s servers for the employee’s own purposes constitutes “unauthorized access,” but this case doesn’t implicate that scenario. (Jeff Neuburger covers the 9th Circuit’s recent ruling in LVRC Holdings, LLC v. Brekka, which acknowledges this split.) Here, the parties had an agreement, and the only viable argument by O’Neil on the unauthorized access issue was that Mitsubishi had authorized O’Neil to access Snap-on’s computers and servers. (Since you had to log-in to access the website, O’Neil could not argue that Snap-on impliedly authorized everyone (including search engines) to access its site.) The terms of the agreement between the parties would resolve this issue and the agreement didn’t provide a definitive answer, at least at the summary judgment stage.

Trespass to Chattels: Snap-on also asserted a trespass claim based on damage or temporary deprivation of the ability to use its servers. The court also declined to resolve this issue on summary judgment, finding that Snap-on presented sufficient evidence to find that O’Neil’s unauthorized access caused Snap-on’s servers to crash and “deprived Snap-on of their use for a substantial time.

O’Neil argued that copyright law preempts Snap-on’s trespass claim. The court summarily (and in a conclusory fashion) rejects this argument, finding that Snap-on’s argument seeks to protect the integrity of its computer servers, rather than its “possessory interest in the [software] or accompanying database.”

Unjust Enrichment: The court finds that Snap-on’s unjust enrichment claims were preempted by the Copyright Act since Snap-on failed to provide any evidence as to how the unjust infringement claims were based on rights distinct from Snap-on’s rights as a copyright owner.

Breach of Contract: Snap-on also asserted a claim for a breach of its end user license agreement. The court declined to dismiss this claim based on the existence of factual dispute as to whether the parties entered the EULA and whether O’Neil breached it. Surprisingly, Snap-on’s website required a log-in but only contained a statement that “[the] use of and access to the information on [Snap-on's] site is subject to the terms and conditions set out in [Snap-on's] legal statement.” Snap-on did not users to check the box, acknowledging that they read and agreed to the end user terms.

Copyright Infringement: Snap-on knew it had an uphill battle on the copyright claim for a few reasons. First, much of the material (such as the images) is owned by Mitsubishi to begin with. Second, it’s tough for anyone to argue that pricing and parts information is copyrightable. With this in mind, Snap-on argued that the “database structure” is entitled to copyright protection and Snap-on owned the copyrights in the structure.

The court went through the Feist analysis. In Feist, the court held that a “factual compilation is eligible for copyright if it features an original selection or arrangement of facts, but the copyright is limited to the particular selection or arrangement. In no event may copyright extend to the facts themselves.” Lower courts have applied Feist and found that databases containing facts may be copyrightable. O’Neil argued that the “arrangement” or the database structure was obvious and was thus not entitled to copyright protection. The court again agrees with Snap-on that factual disputes preclude summary judgment on copyrightability and ownership.

The court’s conclusion on the copyright issue seemed the most problematic. Even if Snap-on owned some part of the underlying arrangement or database structure, did O’Neil “copy” the structure, or otherwise exercise any rights exclusive to the copyright owner? This is a tough sell. Also, on the ownership issue, I would think Mitsubishi would have a colorable argument that even if it didn’t own the copyright, it should be treated as a joint owner along with Snap-on?

Trade Secrets: Finally, the court also declines to grant summary judgment on Snap-on’s trade secrets claims. I’m not sure what trade secrets Snap-on is using to support its claim, and I’m skeptical that any trade secrets exist here that O’Neil misappropriated. However, given that the court declined to grant summary judgment on the other claims, it wasn’t the end of the world for the court to let this claim go to the jury as well.
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Apart from canvassing the various legal theories that come into play in this type of a factual scenario, the case also offers a few practice pointers.

First, if someone is hosting or storing data for you, it makes sense to have a provision in the agreement that allows you to get access to the data at the termination of the relationship, regardless of any contractual dispute that may arise between the parties. The party with physical access to the data will have leverage as a practical matter, and this is the type of thing contractual language should address. As a last resort, the party who may be in a position to extract the data should have an unbridled ongoing right to extract the data during the course of the relationship. The agreement should also have a notice and breach provision that would prevent the summary denial or revocation of authorization.

Second, I’m surprised there wasn’t a clear ownership clause in the agreement that said Mitsubishi owns the underlying data, the database structure, and any copyrightable elements in the database. A determination by the court that Snap-on owns some copyrights in the database structure could cause problems down the road for Mitsubishi. There are many reasons why it made sense for Mitsubishi to own the data, and Snap-on doesn’t have much of a business justification for owning the data because it can’t use it at the termination of the relationship. As a last resort, Mitsubishi should have had a broad license to the data.

Third, the agreement should contain terms allowing Mitsubishi to authorize third parties the right to access Snap-on’s servers and any copyrighted material, at least for back-up and archiving purposes.

Fourth, if you are a website that is looking to prevent scraping, ownership of the underlying data and restrictions on access (such as a log-in) help significantly. Professor Goldman’s comments below highlight that scraping is problematic from a legal standpoint. However, two things that bolstered Snap-on’s claims are its ownership of the data and the fact that O’Neil accessed the site through a log-in which it wasn’t clearly authorized to use. This, coupled with the fact that Snap-on was in physical possession of the data at the termination of the relationship, pretty much put it in the driver’s seat.

Finally, Snap-on’s contract formation process could have been cleaner. Where you have a situation involving access of a website for a business purpose (where the person is accessing data that they need) there’s much less risk of people declining to access your website based on additional hurdles in the form of click throughs or check the box. In the consumer setting, websites often weigh certainty of contract formation against customer conversion, but this isn’t really present in Snap-on’s case. I guess what I’m saying in a long-winded way was that Snap-on should have implemented a mandatory, non-leaky, clickthrough, as discussed in Professor Goldman’s post covering Scherillo v. Dun & Bradstreet.
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Eric’s comments:

This is such a rich and interesting case that both Venkat and I wanted to cover it. I am frequently asked if scraping is legal, and the short answer is that (a) possibly not, but (b) people regularly do it anyway. This case illustrates the difficulty of doing scraping legally, and I highly recommend reading this case to anyone who thinks scraping solves a business problem they are having. If anything, this case was unusually defense-favorable because the replacement vendor (O’Neil) was scraping the customer’s (Mitsubishi’s) data at the customer’s request. Yet, because that data resided on Snap-on’s servers, O’Neil is still staring down the barrel of copyright, contract, CFAA and common law trespass to chattels claims. If I were on the defense team, I’d be whipping out my checkbook and angling for a settlement, because I expect this case will not play well in front of a jury.

This case is slightly similar to a case from earlier this year that I never got a chance to blog, Edgenet v. Home Depot. In both Edgenet and this case, a big company retained an outsourced vendor to maintain and enhance an obviously unwieldy product catalog, and legal tussles ensued when the customer and vendor divorced. According to this opinion, Mitsubishi thought it had procured the IP rights to Snap-on’s enhanced database, but Snap-on thought otherwise and demanded extra money to get something Mitsubishi thought it had already bought. As Venkat indicates, this reinforces the practice pointer that customers always need to have a clear exit strategy nailed down upfront whenever they enter into an outsourcing relationship.

The case is a little less clear about Mitsubishi’s ability to get interim deliveries of the database pre-termination. (The case suggests that Snap-on tried to charge for this as well). As Venkat also indicates, this violates another rule of outsourcing–without a copy of its database, Mitsubishi was never in control of its fate and continuously vulnerable to Snap-on deciding to play a hold-up game.

When Mitsubishi finally decided to go with Plan B and retain O’Neil as Snap-on’s replacement vendor, a series of poor judgments followed. Mitsubishi decided it was too expensive to have O’Neil replicate the work Snap-on had done, and Mitsubishi apparently decided it was too expensive to pay Snap-on for the one-time delivery from its database. But what did Mitsubishi expect–that Snap-on expected to be paid for delivering the data but would acquiesce to free scraping? Snap-on seems to have made it clear that its business model included payment for getting Mitsubishi data out of Snap-on’s database, so Mitsubishi had to know that any alternative courses of action were dicey.

Then O’Neil, presumably trying to be helpful, offered the scraping option. Any lawyer in the process should have kiboshed the idea on the spot. Instead, Mitsubishi gave O’Neil some login credentials in apparent violation of the Snap-on agreement. This reminded me of the Oracle v. SAP lawsuit, which is not going to end well for SAP.

The scraping process did not go well, either. It appears the scraping tool was misconfigured because it allegedly caused enormous traffic spikes that ultimately crashed the site at least once (and maybe twice). Even if the court follows the more restrictive Hamidi approach to common law trespass to chattels requiring damage to computer system resources, this qualifies. Snap-on blocked the scraper’s IP address, so O’Neil offered to continue using a different IP address (a big no-no in my guide to “legitimate” scraping) but only if Mitsubishi signed an indemnity agreement…which Mitsubishi signed. What??? Are you kidding me??? It’s hard to wave a bigger red flag of problems ahead than to have a vendor say that it will only continue if it gets an indemnity agreement. Fortunately for O’Neil, the indemnity agreement may mean that O’Neil won’t be writing checks when the jury says nyet; unfortunately for O’Neil, the indemnity agreement won’t help if the feds decide to bring a criminal CFAA prosecution. Snap-on blocked the second IP address, O’Neil stopped scraping, and Snap-on decided to sue.

Where were the lawyers in this process? I’m shocked that Mitsubishi’s lawyer didn’t shoot down the initial scraping proposal. Scraping was a classic engineer’s solution to a legal problem. But even if the lawyer never got a chance to speak up then, surely lawyers got involved when O’Neil tendered the indemnity agreement to Mitsubishi. That they didn’t put their foot down then blows my mind. Given Snap-on’s delays, it appears that Snap-on might not have even sued if O’Neil hadn’t reinitiated scraping via a second IP address, so the indemnity agreement should have given Mitsubishi and O’Neil enough time and warning to realize that the engineering solution had failed and it was time to seek a legal solution.

As Venkat recaps, the legal rulings are fairly straightforward given our standard understandings of scraping law. However, they illustrate that despite its ubiquity, scraping may not be legally defensible when challenged in court–even, in this case, when Mitsubishi was trying to retrieve “its own” data.

Finally, this case is a microcosm of the broader IP battles over product catalog and taxonomical data. See my notes from my 2007 talk about IP rights in taxonomies. I don’t have a solution to these IP battles, but I continue to wonder about the social benefits we could obtain if a global product catalog existed that everyone could freely use.

Source:http://blog.ericgoldman.org/archives/2010/04/court_denies_su_1.htm

Web data mining is used in business intelligence infrastructure and process challenges

Today, the internet static and dynamic web HTML, PHP and ASP programming languages and flooded with vast amounts of produced pages. Web data mining, offering a lush playground is a superb supply of information. Data saved on the internet in a variety of dimensions and therefore are dynamic in character, it’s an important finding, and processing and unstructured information available on the internet is really a challenge.

The complexness of the web site complexity is a lot more than a conventional text document. Insufficient uniformity and standardization of traditional books on the internet webpages and text documents are extremely simple within their stability. In addition, their limited capacity all Web pages very inefficient data mining using the search engines like google cannot index makes.

Additionally, the web is an extremely dynamic understanding assets and growing in a rapid pace. Sports, news, finance and company sites to update their websites with an hourly or daily. Today web interests of various profiles, and use of countless customers arrived at reasons.

You should observe that merely a small area of the web has truly helpful information. You will find three common ways in which a person takes to gain access to information saved on the web:

Random surfing the net after a lot of hyperlinks. Query search engines like google – Yahoo or google to look for relevant documents (questions specific key phrases of great interest within the search engine)

While using Web as a good way of efficient data mining and understanding discovery, scientists allow us technology to simply extract the appropriate data, easily and price effectively.

Data mining approaches for predictive analysis, automated extraction of hidden information from large databases are defined.

Data mining calculations and mathematical software integrated by using record techniques. The ultimate method is a user friendly software program you can use by non-specialised mathematicians to effectively evaluate data. Data mining, researching the market, consumer behavior, direct marketing, bioinformatics, genetics, text analysis, fraud recognition, site personalization, ecommerce, health care, crm, financial services and telecommunications utilized in many programs for example.

Business intelligence, data mining, is researching the market, industry research, and competitive analysis. The direct marketing, ecommerce, crm, health, gas and oil industry, experiments, genetics, telecommunications, financial services and utilities towards the primary application.

Business Intelligence is really a broad area of decision-making like a tool that utilizes data mining. Actually, using BI data inside a data mining application makes more relevant. Text mining, web mining, internet sites, data mining, relational databases, pictorial data mining, video and audio data mining, data mining, business intelligence programs which are used: you will find various kinds of data mining

Some data mining tools are utilized in BI: decision trees, information, probability, probability density functions, Gaussian, maximum likelihood estimation, Gaussian Braves classification, mix-validation, neural systems, instance-based learning / situation basis / memory based / non-parametric, regression calculations, Bayesian systems, Gaussian mixture models, k-means and hierarchical clustering, Markov models, and so forth. Ian Miles has experience online marketing consultant and creates articles on OCR Data Conversion, OCR Conversion Services, Book Checking Servicesand list cleaning services.

Source:http://filmsitedatascraping.blogspot.in/2013/05/web-data-mining-is-used-in-business.html

Beneficial Data Collection Services

Internet is becoming the biggest source for information gathering. Varieties of search engines are available over the World Wide Web which helps in searching any kind of information easily and quickly. Every business needs relevant data for their decision making for which market research plays a crucial role. One of the services booming very fast is the data collection services. This data mining service helps in gathering relevant data which is hugely needed for your business or personal use.

Traditionally, data collection has been done manually which is not very feasible in case of bulk data requirement. Although people still use manual copying and pasting of data from Web pages or download a complete Web site which is shear wastage of time and effort. Instead, a more reliable and convenient method is automated data collection technique. There is a web scraping techniques that crawls through thousands of web pages for the specified topic and simultaneously incorporates this information into a database, XML file, CSV file, or other custom format for future reference. Few of the most commonly used web data extraction processes are websites which provide you information about the competitor's pricing and featured data; spider is a government portal that helps in extracting the names of citizens for an investigation; websites which have variety of downloadable images.

Aside, there is a more sophisticated method of automated data collection service. Here, you can easily scrape the web site information on daily basis automatically. This method greatly helps you in discovering the latest market trends, customer behavior and the future trends. Few of the major examples of automated data collection solutions are price monitoring information; collection of data of various financial institutions on a daily basis; verification of different reports on a constant basis and use them for taking better and progressive business decisions.

While using these service make sure you use the right procedure. Like when you are retrieving data download it in a spreadsheet so that the analysts can do the comparison and analysis properly. This will also help in getting accurate results in a faster and more refined manner.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Beneficial-Data-Collection-Services&id=5879822

Internet Data Mining - How Does it Help Businesses?

Internet has become an indispensable medium for people to conduct different types of businesses and transactions too. This has given rise to the employment of different internet data mining tools and strategies so that they could better their main purpose of existence on the internet platform and also increase their customer base manifold.

Internet data-mining encompasses various processes of collecting and summarizing different data from various websites or webpage contents or make use of different login procedures so that they could identify various patterns. With the help of internet data-mining it becomes extremely easy to spot a potential competitor, pep up the customer support service on the website and make it more customers oriented.

There are different types of internet data_mining techniques which include content, usage and structure mining. Content mining focuses more on the subject matter that is present on a website which includes the video, audio, images and text. Usage mining focuses on a process where the servers report the aspects accessed by users through the server access logs. This data helps in creating an effective and an efficient website structure. Structure mining focuses on the nature of connection of the websites. This is effective in finding out the similarities between various websites.

Also known as web data_mining, with the aid of the tools and the techniques, one can predict the potential growth in a selective market regarding a specific product. Data gathering has never been so easy and one could make use of a variety of tools to gather data and that too in simpler methods. With the help of the data mining tools, screen scraping, web harvesting and web crawling have become very easy and requisite data can be put readily into a usable style and format. Gathering data from anywhere in the web has become as simple as saying 1-2-3. Internet data-mining tools therefore are effective predictors of the future trends that the business might take.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Internet-Data-Mining---How-Does-it-Help-Businesses?&id=3860679