This will certainly be an ongoing series, so definitely stay tuned, but I have the unique task of finding some really good data mining software for a client vs. trying to code it myself since these days it makes far more sense to follow the basic steps of computing software needs:

1. Is the software the company needs already created and will sufficiently do the tasks they need at an affordable cost to the client/company?
2. If there’s no software that’s a 100% fit either with affordability or satisfaction of the functionality needed, can one be purchased and perhaps customized?
3. If the customization of existing software (either open source or purchasing a developer’s license from a pre-built software company) isn’t available, can it be coded by taking pieces of opensource code and either pairing it together with more open source code or with custom code?
4. If all else fails, break out the checkbook because it’s going to cost you.

Now this is extremely simplified, but it is a basic 4 steps of why you should or shouldn’t be developing your own software for your company’s needs.  There’s other factors not mentioned here such as, possible retail licensing of your software, partnership revenues, etc.  but you get the idea.

So back to the issue…data mining software.  It’s a nightmare to code and quite honestly there’s not a whole lot of good ones out there when it comes right down to it.  Even as a coder, I find the “coding” versions of some of these systems way too complicated than they need to be, and hence not worth my or my clients’ time.

I’ve compiled some thoughts on the following systems, please feel free to comment on your own experiences or if you’ve tried something better….I’m all ears.

Selenium HQ

Not bad software and as a matter of fact if you like Firefox plugins, this one may work for you.  The free price tag on it is equally appealing for certain.  I actually used this software before in its earlier stages, and not much has changed except they have added a full coding module to the system so you can basically run it from a number of coding systems such as asp.NET, PHP, Java, etc. which makes it very appealing to the coder in me, but honestly when it comes to data mining, who wants to spend that amount of time coding something that most likely will change the next time a site you are gathering data from, changes it’s layout or format.  Sorry Selenium….not interested.

Mozenda

Now this company has the right idea when it comes to revenue generating models that work.  This site has both a web client and desktop client (Windows Only right now…grrr) but has a rather snazzy looking interface and really does a heck of a job with giving you free pages (that’s how it tracks your usage/cost) just by going through their pretty comprehensive, but not time consuming tutorials.  I really like the way the data repeaters know that you are looking for results data on this page, but when you click on the title of the product or the image, you can then tell it that you are now going to a product detail page and to continue to grab data for that same row.  It’s pretty intuitive, quick and the free version which gives you about 5,000 pages to churn through, it’s not bad.

Drawbacks are of course the cost.  It can get really pricey for companies who need a lot of data on a daily basis, and their engine for the desktop ran a bit slow at times which was a bit annoying.  Overall, I think this product is perfect for a company who has a small to medium sized budget for data acquisition and has a computer savvy person who would be driving the Mozenda engine, but definitely is more advanced than just your basic MS Office computing user.

Needlebase

This is the last product for this blog post, but it’s the one I’m currently exploring as we speak.  When I first came to their site, I said….ugh….this looks terrible.  However, after doing some research I came to find that it was recently acquired by Google and was made free (for the time being) for any google/gmail/chrome/blah blah blah….registered user.  The interface and data modeling is very difficult to get a grasp on if you’re not familiar with nodes and types and how data models generally come together.  However, if you’re like me where you understand this type of computing, however need a quick and easy way to grab sources of data through a gui interface that allows you to select the various pieces of data on the actual page you are looking to grab data from (Mozenda also does this btw as does Selenium’s FF plugin), but do it a bit more efficiently than the others…you may want to give Needlebase a try.

Ok back to Needlepoint….I mean Needlebasing….I hope this helps a few of you in your searches for robust, easy to use Data Mining software.

 

-Doug Justice is the CEO & Chief Superhero of Justice Solutions LLC.  He is an expert in over 10 different programming languages and development methodologies and performs analysis of company development teams, new business concepts, and web marketing potentials.

by Doug Justice

As news of this threat spreads through the internet this morning, Apple users are asking themselves, “Are Macs immune from hack attempts and viruses?”  The answer is a clear, “No”, but many people also believe that by only accepting friend requests they know of on Facebook results in total anonymity from other people on Facebook.  But that’s a whole other article.

Simply put, every device out there is vulnerable to some extent.  To say a device is “unhackable” is usually said just as that device is hacked.  Celebrating 100 years of the Titanic sinking this month makes it all to easy to equate many Apple users “unhackable” statements to the claims put forth by the White Star Line’s executives who said the hulking ship was, “unsinkable”.  To believe either is certainly steering you towards disaster.

As a Mac user myself, I love the devices and the OS.  Is it better than having a PC/Windows based computer….in my opinion, yes.  However don’t think for one minute that downloading something from the internet or visiting questionable websites won’t infect your precious Apple device.  You need to be smart and always be on your guard.  Look at the advertisers on a site, look at the links the site points to.  Google the heck out of the application or software you are about to download with things like “[software name] virus” or “[website name] trojan”.  You’ll be amazed at what you see.

Ok, so how do you know if your Mac was infected with the Flashback Trojan?  Go to this webpage (hosted by CloudApp) and download the zip file.  Unzip the files and then double click on one in Finder….then the other.  If you see something like the following  you are not infected:

Also, I highly recommend (as you should be doing anyway) making use of Time Machine, an offsite backup storage company such as Carbonite, and stay away from questionable websites on your computers.  It’s just not worth compromising your computer’s and your personal information/files’ safety.

If you have any questions, please always feel free to contact us at any time.

 

 

 

-Doug Justice is the CEO & Chief Superhero of Justice Solutions LLC.  He is an expert in over 10 different programming languages and development methodologies and performs analysis of company development teams, new business concepts, and web marketing potentials.

 

by Doug Justice

While I am a realist in terms of knowing that a company must always be fast paced in making sure customers’ needs are being met, there are some things that really should be a part of every serious company’s applications.  A testing environment separated from the production or live environment with a secondary or staging server in the middle of both.

One of my first questions to a development team I am being asked to lead or review is, “Do you have a development and staging server?”  Many times it’s one of the lead developer’s laptops or maybe a desktop that another developer is using, but overall these do not qualify as formalized development/staging servers and is one of the number one reasons apps released to customers fail so badly.

So why should you waste money on equipment and hosting fees for a server  or server space that serves no purpose except to be a guinea pig for you dev team’s new applications?  The reason is efficiency and excellence.  Development teams are busy fixing bugs in the current production applications, along with being charged with developing the latest and greatest version of the company’s apps.  It’s extremely easy to fix immediate issues right on the production server, but doing so is dangerous and could bring down your entire system right as a customer is performing a critical step in either purchasing items on your site, or using your software and now having a bad experience….may choose to discontinue their business with yours in the future.

Having a “pseudo” live environment, which I call a “Staging” server is basically a mirror of your current production environment.  The only variable should be the change or new addition you are looking to add into production.  Having such a server allows you to put the change through some tests to make sure it is stable before pushing it to your production server.

Having a “dev” server is where all of your mad science experiments should be taking place.  When you’re not sure what a particular class or method will do, it’s reassuring to know you can throw it in there and let the chips fall where they may.  When a new item doesn’t crash your dev server, you can then move it into the staging server for a bit of a more formal test and if successful….it is ready for prime time.

You don’t need to spend hours or even days testing smaller changes…we all know time is money and new technology needs to move fast.  However, just by having this environment in your company’s structure will let you serve more stable and better releases and updates to your customers and production systems, and spend less time troubleshooting massive failures and creating customer apology emails.

-Doug Justice is the CEO & Chief Superhero of Justice Solutions LLC.  He is an expert in over 10 different programming languages and development methodologies and performs analysis of company development teams, new business concepts, and web marketing potentials.

by Doug Justice

If you think just having a good website to be viewed by your potential customers on their computers is enough…think again.  The next generation of marketing experts say that making your site available for customers on the go….i.e. on their mobile devices…is the way to pick up more customers than your competition.

But it’s actually more than just making your website available to the mobile users, it’s about making the website an experience especially for your mobile users.  Still confused?  Think about how most websites render for their mobile users.  More than 85% of the websites out there do one of two things.  They either just allow the website to render on the mobile devices as if they were on a real computer (which is ok considering the Droid and iPhone devices use the same browser as if you were on an actual computer) or they create a “mobile friendly” version of the site which basically strips out all the bells and whistles and images from the site and just allows the text of the site to be read as if you were viewing it on an RSS feed.

The problem with both of those scenarios is either the site renders too small on their phone screens, or the user’s experience is completely deflated when you take out all of the eye candy a website is supposed to use to entice and attract customers to their business.  Just like any huge company…you have to be serving up marketing content for your customers in all shapes and sizes.  Which means you need a mobile enhanced website like some of the examples I’ve featured in this article.

If you are ready for your website to become a “mobile experience” for your potential and existing customers, contact us by any of the ways featured below.  The superheroes are ready to assist you.

-Doug Justice is the CEO & Chief Superhero of Justice Solutions LLC.  He is an expert in over 10 different programming languages and development methodologies and performs analysis of company development teams, new business concepts, and web marketing potentials.

 

 

by Doug Justice

Well it appears as though SOPA and PIPA are tabled….for now.  But that of course won’t stop them completely as there are rumors that parts of them may still rear their ugly heads sometime in the near future.

Many Orlando Florida and Tampa Florida businesses contact Justice Solutions for Web Development and Web Design to create their next vision.  Many of these businesses see social and viral media as the next generation for their ideas and new and current websites and ask us to build and design them exactly that.  iPhone App Creation is another key part of our business and is another venue for the social and viral media outparcels…but not if SOPA and PIPA have their way.

Basically in a nutshell….if there’s copyrighted material on a website and it’s your website…you are responsible for policing it and removing that material or be fined or sued or maybe even both.  The other two big bombshells of the bills is the ability for ISP’s (your internet providers such as Century Link, Time Warner, etc.) to block at their level, any websites accused of having copyrighted material, and the ability for any private owner of copyrighted material to bring a lawsuit against a site (currently only the Justice Department can do so).

These provisions place a huge burden on the owners of the smaller sites trying to get to the levels of YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc. who could easily afford the defense costs if targeted in such a suit.  In an economy which desperately wants and needs to create new opportunities for the American people, it seems as though this legislation really could impact the already barely recovering economy.  Not to mention the fact that the whole censorship of sites “accused” of having copyrighted material on their site at the ISP level just gives me a really bad feeling about these bills.

Now do I feel something needs to be done about online piracy and protection of copyrighted materials….absolutely.  However not at the expense of causing a bigger problem than what currently exists.  Napster combated it by saying….let’s work a deal to make this legal and get you (the music owners) some money since if things continue you’ll have none.  Apple recently combated it by saying to its new iCloud subscribers…hey give us $39 a year and we’ll allow you to “legalize” your music and even give you a better sounding one while we’re at it.  The world of the world wide web is always changing and evolving, so we as a country must continue to evolve as well and not just throw up censorship as the only way to solve a problem.  We need to rethink SOPA and PIPA since otherwise we’ll all be SOL.

-Doug Justice is the CEO & Chief Superhero of Justice Solutions LLC.  He is an expert in over 10 different programming languages and development methodologies and performs analysis of company development teams, new business concepts, and web marketing potentials.