General overview of the OutWit programs
OutWit’s collection technology is organized around three simple concepts:
- The programs dissect the Web page into data elements and enable users to see only the type of data they are looking for (images, links, email addresses, RSS news…).
- They offer a universal collection basket, the « Catch », into which users can manually drag and drop or automatically collect structured or unstructured data, links or media, as they surf the Web.
- They also know how to automatically browse through series of pages, allowing users to harvest all sorts of information objects in a single click.
With simple intuitive features as well as sophisticated scraping functions and data structure recognition, the OutWit programs target a broad range of user categories.
As the users explore the Web, a collection basket, the Catch, is at their disposal at the bottom of the screen, in which they may drag and drop items of interest from the Webpage. All information about these items is stored in a database accessible at anytime. If there are associated files (images, documents…), they can be automatically stored on the user’s hard disk.
OutWit scans the current page to recognize a structure, extract data, and format it into a table that can easily be exported into Excel or other common applications. The recognition algorithms allow processing pages as different as a contact directory, a list of products in a price comparison site, job ads, etc., to identify fields with no or little help from the user. OutWit’s original structure recognition technology tries to recognize lists of data and tables even in non-tabulated pages and documents, without rigorous formatting. If the automatic mode is insufficient, the user has also the option to define scraping parameters manually.
OutWit also offers a series of original tools for navigation and automation. For example, in a search engine, the OutWit application will recognize the series of result pages and browse them automatically. It thus allows the user to launch the collection of specific items through large series of sources with a single click. For Images, OutWit will explore the source and try to locate high-resolution images, if they exist, behind the displayed thumbnails.
All these features will eventually give your Web browser all the necessary intelligence to efficiently assist you as you surf, freeing you of the repetitive tasks and letting you spend more time on what really matters.
by jcc
Tags: extract data, OutWit Docs, Outwit Hub, OutWit Images