Anthracite Web Mining Desktop Toolkit for Mac

User Reviews

• Anthracite

  theolo_dotmacJune 7, 2005

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />I have used webscraper 3.0, SiteSucker, and several other products. I like Anthracite for several reasons, 1. I get to design what it is that I extract down to the last detail! 2. It runs fast 3. Joe is helpful, no really I mean it. ** in support of this statement, Joe helped me walk thru a problem I was having during my eval period, three emails and I am sure an hour or so of "actual" work. --- In response to the "I dont know what the limitations are on the demo...so I trashed it" There are not any, I used the product for "longer" than the timelimit and paid for it because I like it. 4. its very flexible, I also don't like it for that reason, I would rather not write REGEX expressions:-) I think that there are a few things that would make this a stellar product: 1. better update notices, they sit in the terminal window:-( 2. better documentation (but who cant use that?) 3. It (on my system) freaks out on large files... 30mb and larger. 4. easier ability to download the update, unless I am missing something. its the only reason I am back here is to download .3. Anyway, if you can write or learn to write scripts and you know what you want to do, then this is the product for you. I just hope Joe doesn't force me to move to 10.4!! (you reading this Joe?) TL

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• Excellent Software, Service

  jrrJune 23, 2004

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />We contacted the developer to assist in a project to extract and tabulate data from a government website described by most users as 'The worst database in the world' . Service was excellent and the product eliminates a laborious 2 day task each month. I recommend this product to anyone who has to aggregate data from websites. The only thing missing is an autostart function similiar to that in Syncronise

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• First experiences wth Anthracite

  rmosebarJune 22, 2004

  Pros

  Cons

  Summary

  This review was originally posted on VersionTracker.com.<br />Every once in a great while a software product is developed that is just what you have been looking for and, in even more rare cases, comes with exceptional support and commitment to improving it's already outstanding features. Anthracite and Metafy, Inc. are just such a combination. Anthracite is a powerful tool for extracting data from web pages, email and regular text documents. The thought and experiences that have gone into this product are impressive. Yet, Metafy is already adding functionality we have suggested even though we have only had the product for a couple of weeks. We are using it to extract election results data from county web sites. Needless to say, the style of HTML coding varies widely from county to county. Usually it is very poor. Yet, we have been able to extract our data from every site we have tested, so far. After all of this, the price is one of the best bargains on the web. If you are an OS X user and have been trying to mine data from web pages, this product should be given a strong consideration.

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