Are there any open source web scrapers that I can use to get original URLs from shortened URLs (e.g. bit.ly, is.gd, tinyurl, etc). [more inside]
posted by alohaliz on Apr 21, 2009 - 6 answers

Are there differences between car ice scrapers? [more inside]
posted by wukkuan on Oct 29, 2008 - 21 answers

So in my reckless youth, i created a blog-style resource for gay/les/bi teens to get information on books to read on the subject. (self-link for the purposes of the question). Now i'd would like to convert it into an actual honest-to-god wordpress-backed blog. Is there any way i can make this a more automated process than having to copy and paste each pseudo-entry into an entry of its own. I guess i'm asking for some kind of screen scraper that can output XML or RSS that isn't superduper hard/expensive for this project. I'm sure this is laugh-out-loud simple, but I haven't had any luck finding worthwhile solutions that arent $1500 SQL-enhanced extravaganzae.
posted by softlord on Sep 14, 2007 - 6 answers

How can a nonprogrammer make a database from a set of search query results? [more inside]
posted by Mr. Gunn on Mar 29, 2007 - 14 answers

A project at work has come up, and I would save a lot of time and hassle if I could somehow get my hands on a free (cheap is acceptable, as long as I can try it first), easy to use web-scraping program. The URL from which I will be scraping is static, unencrypted, and otherwise extremely vanilla. Suggestions?
posted by Kwantsar on Jul 22, 2005 - 12 answers