AlchemyPoint provides extremely capable HTML content scraping capabilities, allowing for 'structured' data to be extracted from websites and other Internet-based data sources. Extracted content can be utilized to apply additional context and meaning to the websites you visit, in the form of AlchemyPoint Suggestions.
In this example, we're teaching AlchemyPoint how to decode a form of structured data (a music "artist name"). This "teaching" process takes only a few seconds, and instantly adds additional context to webpages via the AlchemyPoint Suggestions that become enabled.
You can 'teach' AlchemyPoint about any sort of content you desire (scientific journals, blog posts, it doesn't matter!). Once 'taught', AlchemyPoint will always understand the context of a webpage, offering useful browsing and mashup suggestions.
1. Open your Web Browser to the website that you desire to 'teach' AlchemyPoint about. In this example, we're using The Daily Vault, a music review website.
2. Click the Orchestr8 icon in your web browser navigation toolbar, and select "Customize this Page!".
The AlchemyPoint toolbar will now appear, and the web browser will refresh in "Page Edit Mode".
3. Click the "Actions" pulldown menu, and select "Content Manipulation"->"Data Extraction"->"From Web Page"->"Page Selection".
A pop-up sidebar will appear in your Browser window, offering a number of predefined types of 'structured data' you may extract:
4. Double-click the "music_artist" data type from the Browser sidebar.
The command entry field will now appear as below:
The Web Browser will now enter "Content Selection Mode". Web page elements will become highlighted as you drag your computer mouse across the Browser window.
5. Highlight the music artist name (in this case, "Radiohead") with your mouse, and click to select it.
The "Actions" menu in the AlchemyPoint toolbar automatically transforms into a "Conditions" menu.
6. Click the "Conditions" pulldown menu, and select "Location"->"On This Website".
The "completed" mashup command will now appear as below:
5. Click the "Do It!" button, or press the [Enter] key.
The webpage will now refresh. The AlchemyPoint Suggestions menu will now be populated with a number of useful recommendations related to the "music artist" we've taught AlchemyPoint about:
Since we also applied the "on this website" condition, these music-related suggestions will appear on any 'music review' page within this website (not just the music review page where we originally applied the command). Now that you've seen how to 'teach', try telling AlchemyPoint where to find other information on this website (for instance, "music_album"):
And that's it! You've 'taught' AlchemyPoint how to decode structured content from a webpage in less than 30 seconds. In future versions of AlchemyPoint, you'll be able to share these 'extractions' with other users -- allowing others to take advantage of what you've done!
