I have really neglected this blog over the past few years. I’d really like to post more often but I’ve been dealing with some personal issues that haven’t helped. The end of the year is a time that many people reflect over the past year. I’m going to extend that a little bit. I’m going … Continue reading Reflections on the Past Few Years
Regular Expression Converter for Watson Explorer Engine
Sometimes it’s useful to extract data from a Watson Explorer content node using regular expressions. In this post, I’ll show you how to extract data using a regular expression and create a new content node for that specific data. To start off we will use the default example-metadata collection. We will attempt to extract any … Continue reading Regular Expression Converter for Watson Explorer Engine
Using crawl-url nodes to enqueue data along with a url in Watson Explorer
viv:crawl-enqueue-url is documented as having 1 argument – the url to enqueue. However, it has an optional second form with two arguments which allows much more flexibility. If the first argument is set to the url and the second is a variable containing a crawl-url, that also works. (note the use of entities to create … Continue reading Using crawl-url nodes to enqueue data along with a url in Watson Explorer
Watson Explorer XSL Tips and Tricks
Using the Chico Application to Test XSLT Here’s an example use of Chico! I was testing something to do with evaluating XSLT and wanted to run it quickly: <vce> <process-xsl><![CDATA[ <xsl:template match=”/”> <xsl:variable name=”params”> <param name=”jean” value=”bar” /> </xsl:variable> <foo2> … Continue reading Watson Explorer XSL Tips and Tricks
Copy and Modified Documents with a Watson Explorer Converter
A common task when crawling and indexing a document in Watson Explorer Engine (WEX) is making changes to a document during the conversion process. The most common occurrence is needing to copy all the contents in the application-vxml document while making some changes to one or a few of those contents. To do this, there is … Continue reading Copy and Modified Documents with a Watson Explorer Converter
The Cognitive Call Center on IBM Watson
One of the major use cases I see for Watson Explorer (WEX) is in call centers. No matter the specific industry the major goal for call centers are decreasing call time and increasing customer satisfaction rates. The way to do this is to get the correct information in front of the Customer Service Representative (CSR) as fast … Continue reading The Cognitive Call Center on IBM Watson
Building a Business Around a 3rd Party API
Today I read an interesting post on HackerNews about a price comparison site, PriceZombie, being kicked out of the Amazon Associates program. The Amazon Associates program is Amazon’s affiliate network. Amazon pays a commision for any sales you bring in through affiliate links. Since I have a pretty extensive background with affiliate marketing I have a few thoughts … Continue reading Building a Business Around a 3rd Party API
Tracking Ad Blockers Using Google Analytics
If you’ve read any of my older posts you probably know that I’ve been involved in internet advertising, in some form, for a long time now. Lately I’ve been seeing more and more posts about how ad blocking is growing at a tremendous rate. I still have some sites that make money from display advertising … Continue reading Tracking Ad Blockers Using Google Analytics
The Best WordPress Email Plugin
Thinking about adding a WordPress email plugin to your site? One of the most power marketing tools that anyone publishing online can take advantage of is email marketing. According to the Direct Marketing Association email advertising has an average return on investment of %4,300 in the United States. Email is consistently the best performing media in … Continue reading The Best WordPress Email Plugin
Are Products the Road to Prosperity?
A few weeks ago a wrote a somewhat popular post about my past experiences trying to make money online. I went through the ups and downs of working as an affiliate promoting other people’s products. At the conclusion of the post I said that I wanted to focus on building some type of product. So … Continue reading Are Products the Road to Prosperity?