A Practical Technique for Using the World Wide Web to Generate and Codify Data

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The increasing popularity of the World Wide Web has expanded the opportunities for gathering information through this medium. One example is form surveys, used for collecting data for analytical purposes, such as research, database generation, or conference registration. For quite some time it has been possible to use the web to send form queries, but it was necessary to manually extract the data from the returned forms and place it into either a database or a statistical analysis program in order to codify the information received. A newly developed shareware Macintosh program, now available, makes capturing data from a web survey automatic and easy. eScan (1997) by Tim Barlow is a Macintosh utility that recognizes, extracts, and processes electronic form data embedded in e-mail messages. This is achieved by the provision of a software interface …