Avanços técnicos na integração dos sistemas de comunicação e computação têm revelado interesse científico as potencialidades das redes de dispositivos telemáticos - nas quais integram equipamentos dotados de capacidade de transmissão e processamento de informação - em áreas que cobrem desde o ensino à distância, até telemedicina, automação remota e tele-instrumentação científica. Especialmente em virtude do reconhecimento das destacadas facilidades da Internet, dentre as aplicações mais visadas encontra-se o compartilhamento de recursos (dados e instrumentos) em escala global. Em um terreno ainda predominantemente marcado pelo empirismo característico das frentes de exploração recentes, este estudo investiga os fundamentos da operação à distância em redes telemáticas, através da identificação das atuais tendências no emergente campo do comando remoto via Internet, examinando os aspectos tecnológicos no que se concerne ao seu desenvolvimento e aplicações. A partir de uma extensa revisão do assunto, abarcando tanto o cenário acadêmico quanto a indústria industrial, o trabalho apresenta uma abordagem alternativa em relação às técnicas atualmente empregadas. Mediante a construção de um protótipo, o estudo introduz uma arquitetura experimental distribuída, baseada no conceito de ambiente virtual cooperativo, através da qual dispositivos tele-interativos exportam suas funcionalidades para os demais elementos na rede. Então, através de uma série de ensaios e avaliações, discutem-se as aplicações e limitações do mecanismo, bem como dos recursos tecnológicos atualmente disponíveis para a construção de efetivos sistemas de dispositivos telemáticos através da Internet. / Technical advances in the integration of computer and communication systems have drawn to the attention of scientific interest the potentialities of the telematic-device networks - where pieces of equipment endowed with information processing and transmission capabilities interact - in areas ranging from distance learning to telemedicine, remote automation and scientific tele-instrumentation. Particularly with the perception of the benefits brought about by the Internet, one of the most sought after applications is the global-wide resource (data and instruments) sharing systems. In a field still distinguished by the empirical practices that are typical in recent exploration fronts, this study investigates the foundations of distance operation in telematic networks by identifying the current trends in the emerging area of Internet-based remote command, examining the technological aspects that concerns to its development and application. Starting with an extensive review on the subject, covering both academic and industrial initiatives, this work introduces an alternative approach to the techniques currently employed. By means of a prototype, the study presents an experimental distributed architecture based on the concept of virtual cooperative environment, through which tele-interactive devices export their functionality to the other elements on the network. Then, through a set of tests and evaluations, applications and limitations of the mechanism are discussed, as well as the technological resources currently available for the development of effective telematic-device sharing systems over the Internet.

Avanços técnicos na integração dos sistemas de comunicação e computação têm revelado interesse científico as potencialidades das redes de dispositivos telemáticos - nas quais integram equipamentos dotados de capacidade de transmissão e processamento de informação - em áreas que cobrem desde o ensino à distância, até telemedicina, automação remota e tele-instrumentação científica. Especialmente em virtude do reconhecimento das destacadas facilidades da Internet, dentre as aplicações mais visadas encontra-se o compartilhamento de recursos (dados e instrumentos) em escala global. Em um terreno ainda predominantemente marcado pelo empirismo característico das frentes de exploração recentes, este estudo investiga os fundamentos da operação à distância em redes telemáticas, através da identificação das atuais tendências no emergente campo do comando remoto via Internet, examinando os aspectos tecnológicos no que se concerne ao seu desenvolvimento e aplicações. A partir de uma extensa revisão do assunto, abarcando tanto o cenário acadêmico quanto a indústria industrial, o trabalho apresenta uma abordagem alternativa em relação às técnicas atualmente empregadas. Mediante a construção de um protótipo, o estudo introduz uma arquitetura experimental distribuída, baseada no conceito de ambiente virtual cooperativo, através da qual dispositivos tele-interativos exportam suas funcionalidades para os demais elementos na rede. Então, através de uma série de ensaios e avaliações, discutem-se as aplicações e limitações do mecanismo, bem como dos recursos tecnológicos atualmente disponíveis para a construção de efetivos sistemas de dispositivos telemáticos através da Internet. / Technical advances in the integration of computer and communication systems have drawn to the attention of scientific interest the potentialities of the telematic-device networks - where pieces of equipment endowed with information processing and transmission capabilities interact - in areas ranging from distance learning to telemedicine, remote automation and scientific tele-instrumentation. Particularly with the perception of the benefits brought about by the Internet, one of the most sought after applications is the global-wide resource (data and instruments) sharing systems. In a field still distinguished by the empirical practices that are typical in recent exploration fronts, this study investigates the foundations of distance operation in telematic networks by identifying the current trends in the emerging area of Internet-based remote command, examining the technological aspects that concerns to its development and application. Starting with an extensive review on the subject, covering both academic and industrial initiatives, this work introduces an alternative approach to the techniques currently employed. By means of a prototype, the study presents an experimental distributed architecture based on the concept of virtual cooperative environment, through which tele-interactive devices export their functionality to the other elements on the network. Then, through a set of tests and evaluations, applications and limitations of the mechanism are discussed, as well as the technological resources currently available for the development of effective telematic-device sharing systems over the Internet.

This master's thesis deals with the development of the application for automatic price comparison of goods. The application works on the principle that the user enters inputs as a list of products and output is a list of offers from monitored dealers for all entered products. There is possibility for the user to create his individual settings for each website or use searching on existing comparison shopping website. Target group of users are dealers, distributors and manufacturers who use the data for monitoring competitors and changes in market prices.

This report goes through the process of developing a generic article scraper which shall extract relevant information from an arbitrary web article. The extraction is implemented by searching and examining the HTML of the article, by using Python and XPath. The data that shall be extracted is the title, summary, publishing date and body text of the article. As there is no standard way that websites, and in particular news articles, is built, the extraction needs to be adapted for every different structure and language of articles. The resulting program should provide a proof of concept method of extracting the data showing that future development is possible. The thesis host company Acuminor is working with financial crime intelligence and are collecting information through articles and reports. To scale up the data collection and minimize the maintenance of the scraping programs, a general article scraper is needed. There exist an open source alternative called Newspaper, but since this is no longer being maintained and it can be argued is not properly designed, an internal implementation for the company could be beneficial. The program consists of a main class that imports extractor classes that have an API for extracting the data. Each extractor are decoupled from the rest in order to keep the program as modular as possible. The extraction for title, summary and date are similar, with the extractors looking for specific HTML tags that contain some common attribute that most websites implement. The text extraction is implemented using a tree that is built up from the existing text on the page and then searching the tree for the most likely node containing only the body text, using attributes such as amount of text, depth and number of text nodes. The resulting program does not match the performance of Newspaper, but shows promising results on every part of the extraction. The text extraction is very slow and often takes too much text of the article but provides a great blueprint for further improvement at the company. Acuminor will be able to have their in-house article extraction that suits their wants and needs. / Den här rapporten går igenom processen av att utveckla en generisk artikelskrapare som ska extrahera reöevamt information från en godtycklig artikelhemsida. Extraheringen kommer bli implementerad genom att söka igenom och undersöka HTML-en i artikeln, genom att använda Python och XPath. Datan som skall extraheras är titeln, summering, publiceringsdatum och brödtexten i artikeln. Eftersom det inte finns något standard sätt som hemsidor, och mer specifikt nyhetsartiklar är uppbyggda, extraheringen måste anpassas för varje olika struktur och språk av artiklar. Det resulterande programmed skall visa på ett bevis för ett koncept sätt att extrahera datan som visar på att framtida utveckling är möjlig. Projektets värdföretag Acuminor jobbar inom finansiell brottsintelligens och samlar ihop information genom artiklar och rapporter. För att skala upp insamlingen av data och minimera underhåll av skrapningsprogrammen, behövs en generell artikelskrapare. Det existerar ett öppen källkodsalternativ kallad Newspaper, men eftersom denna inte länge är underhållen och det kan argumenteras att den inte är så bra designad, är en intern implementation för företaget fördelaktigt. Programmet består av en huvudklass som importerar extraheringsklasser som har ett API för att extrahera datan. Varje extraherare är bortkopplad från resten av programmet för att hålla programmet så moodulärt som möjligt. Extraheringen för titel, summering och datum är liknande, där extragherarna tittar efter specifika HTML taggar som innehåller något gemensamt attribut som de flesta hemsidor implementerar. Textextraheringen är implementerad med ett träd som byggs upp från grunden från den existerande texten på sidan och sen söks igenom för att hitta den mest troliga noden som innehåller brödtexten, där den använder attribut såsom text, djup och antal textnoder. Det resulterande programmet matchar inte prestandan av Newspaper, men visar på lovande resultat vid varje del av extraheringen. Textextraheringen är väldigt långsam och hämtar ofta för mycket text från artikeln men lämnar ett bra underlag för vidare förbättring hos företaget. Allt som allt kommer Acuminor kunna bygga vidare på deras egna artikel extraherare som passar deras behov.