The 4 Most Famous Web Screen Scraping Tools of 2018

Data scraping is a process that may scare many. However, the process itself is exactly like it sounds, you scrape data, collecting it and storing it for use. It is a process that many businesses now rely on for various different functions from marketing to recruiting.

As data scraping became more popular, you can find a variety of different software that now makes the process possible. Picking a specific tool for yourself may be a lot tougher than you initially thought. We have made the process easier for you by selecting the top 4 most famous web screen scraping tool of 2018.

Octoparse

Our rating: 4.7 out of 5

With a user-friendly interface, Octoparse is a free yet powerful data extraction tool. It allows users to grab data from a website and save them directly in different formats such as CSV, HTML, and Excel. It also comes with a Regex tool that allows you to grab data and content from websites that may use a data block layout. You get quite a lot of functionalities in the free version so if you are looking for a powerful, free scraping tool then Octoparse is a great option.

Parsehub

Our rating: 4.6 out of 5

If you want a great scraping tool to extract data from visuals such as calendars, interactive maps while also from forums, comments, forms, Javascript, and Ajax then Parsehub is your scraping tool. The tool works well on various platforms from Windows to Macs so is a great tool for any user. While it is free, if you have massive data extraction projects, you will have to sign up for their enterprise solution.

Content Grabber

Our rating: 4.5 out of 5

Content Grabber is a comprehensive scraping tool that works well for data collection from search and product catalogs. You can even grab data from AJAX websites, which are more dynamic and complex. It is one of the more powerful tools so you do need to have a background in programming to truly get the most from the tool. The license of the tool is commercial.

Mozenda

Our rating: 4.4 out of 5

Mozenda is a cloud-based scraping service (SaaS) which provides good data extraction features to users. The web console of the tool is easy to use and you can easily run your projects on it. You can then publish or export the data that was extracted to your computer.

How to Extract Data from Website: DIY, Scraping Tools or DaaS

Data extraction is no longer as time-consuming as before. The process has been made a lot simpler thanks to the numerous different data extraction tools available. You can even get dozens of premium tools for free online that will help you with your extraction project.

DIY: Using web crawlers

For the more tech savvy of us, the most flexible and customizable option would be to create their own web crawlers that can scrape the data they want, whenever they need. You can design a web crawler with the help PHP, Python, or Java, there are also so many different open source option out there for you to consider.

With this particular approach, you get to define exactly what type of data you want. You also dictate the frequency at which the data is collected. Making the whole extraction process custom to your needs. However, manual crawling can be fairly complex. Especially, if the project itself is complex so you need to invest a bit more of your time and resources to those projects.

Use of Scraping Tool

Scraping tools make the whole process of web crawling and data extraction far less easy. There are different commercial tools you can purchase and employ to do the job for you. The tool will work out all the complex problems and your developers can focus on things like core competencies rather than actually making crawlers.

Scraping tools are best used for ad-hoc projects. The work well when you have a specific group of websites you want the crawlers to gather data from. If you ask the tool to go into the open web and gather data for you, chances are it won’t do such an amazing job at it. So use it more specific jobs.

DaaS providers

DaaS stands for data as a service and you can find different companies that can provide you with the data you need by doing the extraction work for you. You can purchase the data from them and don’t have to purchase a scraping tool or develop an infrastructure to extract data yourself. You rely solely on the data that is provided by DaaS in this regard and while you do give them a guideline, you don’t have complete control over the data and how it is extracted. If you have larger data extraction projects then DaaS does prove some advantages as experts in the field will work at extracting and providing you with the data so it is more viable.

How to Recover Deleted Videos on Android

Android phones and tablets are fairly popular, the operating system is used by almost every smartphone and tablet besides Apple products. With phones and tablets having better cameras, people prefer to use these devices to take photos and videos. You can easily transfer them to others and always have the video with you. However, that also puts them at risk of data loss. You can accidentally delete the video or lose your data in another way. That doesn’t mean you need to panic though. We will tell you to step by step process of recovering deleted videos from an Android device.

Step 1: Debug the device

First, you will need to download a software that allows you to recover deleted data on your Android phone. You can use Wondershare Dr. Fone for Android which will make the process much easier. Run the software and connect your device with a USB to your computer.

The software will then detect the device and prompt you to enable the debugging on the phone. To do this you need to go into Settings then About Phone and then select Build Number, you will need to tap this option until the message “You are under developer mode” appears. Once it does, go back into settings, select Developers options and USB debugging.

Step 2: Search for deleted data on the device

On the software on your PC, the software will be ready for the scan now. You will have the option to click Next once the device has been debugged and identified by the software. You need to click on it and allow it to scan your device.

Step 3: What to scan?

Once you have allowed for the scan to occur, the software will ask exactly what should be scanned. You have the option to scan for audio, contacts, videos, gallery, and so on. Select all the files you want to be scanned and then click Next. You will be directed to a new screen which will give you the option to Scan for deleted files, select it and click Next.

Step 4: Recovery

As soon as the scan is completed it will show you all deleted videos and other files in a preview mode. You can select those that you want to recover and the software will do just that.

How to Download Youtube Videos to Computer?

YouTube has become one of the most video streaming websites online. You can easily watch videos posted on the website. However, the website doesn’t provide you with the option to download the videos to your computer. Which means you can only browse them when you are on the website and have access to the internet. There are still ways you can download the videos to your website using third party options.

There are numerous third-party websites that allow you to download any video you want from YouTube. The below steps will help you with the process.

1. The first step you need to do is open the video on YouTube. Once the video page has loaded, copy the URL of the video.
2. On Google, search for a website that allows you to download YouTube video. These websites allow you to paste YouTube URLs and download the video.
3. Once you have found a website that allows this, paste the URL into the video browse box. There should be a link next to it that says download video.
4. When you paste the URL to the YouTube it should automatically show you a preview of the video so you can tell it is the right video.
5. You then have the option of downloading the video in different quality.
6. Click the download button after selecting the quality and it should download to your “downloads” folder.

Note that not all videos can be downloaded. Private videos will not be downloadable since the downloader doesn’t have access to these videos.

Which Programming Language to Learn as a Beginner

If you are aware of job trends around the world, then you probably know that there has been an increase in demand for software programming jobs. In the past decade, there has been a drastic increase in software jobs, approximately an increase of 31%. It is an industry that is predicted to continue to grow until 2030.

Deciding to go into programming is tough because you have a wide-variety of options in terms of program languages you can learn. However, before you decide on which program you want to learn, it is important you figure out why you want to learn coding? If you are just looking to work on websites then you can learn basic coding such as HTML or something more complicated like PHP or CSS which are in demand today. However, if you want to go into application and software development then you have a tough decision to make.

When selecting the most suitable language for yourself, it is important to take into account the difficulty of the language and the demand for it in the market. So keeping both these in mind, which programming language is great for a beginner? C is probably the best option if you are a beginner looking to learn a programming language.

Why C?

C is a programming language that was developed by Microsoft and mostly runs on Windows. The language allows you to work with games, web development, and other development work within Microsoft. Initially, the language was just for Windows. However, Xamarin has developed Mono which is an open source project that allows for C to be ported to different platforms. So with it, it is easier to use the language for mobile applications for both iOS and Android.

Knowing C will also present you with the option of learning C++ since that is based on C. It is more powerful and is the language that is behind numerous applications and games that we have on our computer and mobiles.

If we look at the demand of programmers that know C or C++ the two tied with JavaScript in terms of jobs posted with rough 20% of programming jobs based on them in 2017. While there is a huge market for javascript developers there is still a lack of C programmers so the demand is high for it while the supply of developers is still low.