4 ms·

Is there any particular reason you don't just have a multiline text box, and allow anything to be entered/pasted, and then just figure it out? Why should a hum

Is there any particular reason you don't just have a multiline text box, and allow anything to be entered/pasted, and then just figure it out? Why should a human have to parse out bits of contact information and separately add each one to your form? (Your computers have billions of cpu cycles, bytes of memory and storage - surely they can do it.) For example I should be able to paste in any block from this page http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/publicrelationscontacts/asia-pacific-public-relations-1377283.html http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/press/publicrelationscont... and have it figure out names, email addresses, phone numbers etc.

deleted 14y ago
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UnoriginalGuy 14y ago
Is that a common scenario? I am mostly moving single pieces of information rather than entire blocks of text like you're proposing. If we take your specific example, how would a computer even with "billions of cpu cycles" figure out which piece of information is someone's name and which is their job title? Or which is an address Vs. job title? Sorting data and understanding it is a "hard problem" and relatively speaking computing power plays a very small part of that. What plays a much larger part is just having MASSIVE databases of already sorted data to compare against (e.g. Siri).
- rogerbinns 14y ago
  > Is that a common scenario? I am mostly moving single pieces of information rather than entire blocks of text like you're proposing. You most likely have the information as a single block especially if copying it from somewhere else. And it is certainly far easier if the user has to do one copy and paste versus once per field. In this particular case they have a user sitting there so the answer doesn't have to be perfect every time - they just have to make sure that if the heuristics mess up that it can be corrected (eg let the user drag and drop elements into the right arrangement/field names). > Or which is an address Vs. job title? The former is likely to occur in a geocoding database and the latter isn't. close.io focusses on sales so that immediately narrows down the likely possibilities for contact information. I'd be pretty sure naive code would have an 80% success rate, and analytics plus ongoing development would ensure ever improving success rates.
- deleted 14y ago
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philfreo 14y ago
We've experimented with this concept for our Chrome extension, but I think it's worth exploring more. http://blog.close.io/post/46905541008/the-close-io-lead-clipper http://blog.close.io/post/46905541008/the-close-io-lead-clip... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeio/cmhcoonbgfibfbeagkanjpaododgbfic?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeio/cmhcoonbgf...
mseebach 14y ago
It's called entity extraction, and it's not very easy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named-entity_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named-entity_recognition This seems to be a product for it: http://www.alchemyapi.com/api/entity/proc.html http://www.alchemyapi.com/api/entity/proc.html
maddddddddddddd 14y ago
valid email addresses are also always valid URLs with HTTP authentication with no password... i guess i sweat the details a little more than some...

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UnoriginalGuy 14y ago

Is that a common scenario? I am mostly moving single pieces of information rather than entire blocks of text like you're proposing. If we take your specific example, how would a computer even with "billions of cpu cycles" figure out which piece of information is someone's name and which is their job title? Or which is an address Vs. job title? Sorting data and understanding it is a "hard problem" and relatively speaking computing power plays a very small part of that. What plays a much larger part is just having MASSIVE databases of already sorted data to compare against (e.g. Siri).

rogerbinns 14y ago
> Is that a common scenario? I am mostly moving single pieces of information rather than entire blocks of text like you're proposing. You most likely have the information as a single block especially if copying it from somewhere else. And it is certainly far easier if the user has to do one copy and paste versus once per field. In this particular case they have a user sitting there so the answer doesn't have to be perfect every time - they just have to make sure that if the heuristics mess up that it can be corrected (eg let the user drag and drop elements into the right arrangement/field names). > Or which is an address Vs. job title? The former is likely to occur in a geocoding database and the latter isn't. close.io focusses on sales so that immediately narrows down the likely possibilities for contact information. I'd be pretty sure naive code would have an 80% success rate, and analytics plus ongoing development would ensure ever improving success rates.
deleted 14y ago
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philfreo 14y ago

We've experimented with this concept for our Chrome extension, but I think it's worth exploring more. http://blog.close.io/post/46905541008/the-close-io-lead-clipper http://blog.close.io/post/46905541008/the-close-io-lead-clip... https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeio/cmhcoonbgfibfbeagkanjpaododgbfic?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/closeio/cmhcoonbgf...

mseebach 14y ago

It's called entity extraction, and it's not very easy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named-entity_recognition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Named-entity_recognition This seems to be a product for it: http://www.alchemyapi.com/api/entity/proc.html http://www.alchemyapi.com/api/entity/proc.html

maddddddddddddd 14y ago

valid email addresses are also always valid URLs with HTTP authentication with no password... i guess i sweat the details a little more than some...