How to normalize company names - ruby-on-rails

We have user generated names of employers that come in all variations. For example, people have typed in or imported:
Google
Google, Inc.
Google Inc.
Google inc
To a database search this, looks like a different company all together. We've changed some things to map each employer to a "normalized" name, but with 70,000 in total, it becomes hard to do it by hand.
Does anyone have suggestions on how to normalize the existing entries, and also how to maintain we do it for all incoming names as well?

There are two things you can do to help:
When users are adding a company name, give them an autocomplete box so that they get suggestions if it already exists. Alternatively suggest an existing one like stackoverflow does when you add a question.
Use a search tool when querying the database so that you can summarise all variations. You can find search gems here https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/rails_search
I don't think "normalizing" them after the fact will be easy nor accurate.

Related

Passing specific delivery instructions through to ChowNow from online ordering link

I'm helping develop an online ordering process for a local business, and they are offering food delivery to their location from specific partnered restaurants. The problem we're looking to solve is making the experience as smooth as possible for the user, so we're aiming to fill out these specific data fields to make the process smoother. They have QR codes on their tables, that link directly to their websites ordering page, from there the user can select from a few local restaurants, and are linked to their online ChowNow menus.
Does anyone have any experience using ChowNow, and knows if there is any way to pass off specific delivery instructions to ChowNow, specifically an address, from the link provided to the users from the QR code on their table?
We haven't found anything too helpful on this problem from ChowNow's official documentation or support. There are alternate ways that we have in mind to solve this problem if need be, but this is the desired solution from the client, and we would like to have stick with this method if possible.

view search queries by popuarity containing keyword

I have been spending some time watching the search queries that bring people to my site on google analytics recently, in order to see if people are finding exacty what they are looking for and if not creating that new content. But i figured an easier way would be to what search queries are popular. But containing a keyword that relates to my site.
for example, i want to see all the most queried search terms that contain "in japanese".
like "dog in japanese", "i love you in japanese"
I have found http://www.google.com/trends/
but after playing with it for a while it doesnt seem like i can do this. seems like i can just see popularity of spesific queries. I dont want to see how popular specific queries are, i want to see what queries containing x are popular. Anywhere i can do this?
If you join the Google AdWords program, you can use the Keyword Planner tool to try out keywords and immediately get the number of searches per month in a chosen geography. This is a very interesting tool. See http://adwords.google.com.
I'm not sure this question belongs here on SO though.

Turning addresses into GPS coordinates into delivery route?

I'm not sure whether this question belongs to StackOverflow, SuperUser, or yet another StackExchange site.
I have a list of locations (prospects I need to meet) I have to drive to, and I'd like to use either Google Maps or Open Street View to build an optimized route.
Are there tools that can do this, eg. they take a CSV list of locations and generate a driving route?
Thank you.
If your list is short enough, you could build a custom link with all the locations which might be easier than the AutoIT approach. Look at the link that allows you to share a map with several route stops, and then use that syntax to chain your locations together. I think that would be easier than pasting them into the UI which recently changed.

Problem with sharepoint search

I have created the Contact list. I feed proper data where required in my personal sharepoint site. Bu when I look for the specific name or any key word that present in contact list it shows message :
No results matching your search were found.
Check your spelling. Are the words in your query spelled correctly?
Try using synonyms. Maybe what you're looking for uses slightly different words.
Make your search more general. Try more general terms in place of specific ones.
Try your search in a different scope. Different scopes can have different results.
Where is, I am giving proper inputs by following these instructions. What should be problem. Is i nees to make any setting for make my data searchable ?
You must config your search engine at SharePoint Central Administration. Or ask your administrator to config this.

All Countries States Cities and Zipcodes in a Application

Is there a way getting all countries, states,cities zipcodes/ in one single database.
I have been looking all over.
I discovered geonames.org, which has I guess all of the content. But there is no way to fetch that data directly.
I am using rails. If there any helpers or Plugins, it'd be great. It would be awesome if there is a complete resource in any parsable format which I can use to get this database in place.
Please recommend if you any thanks
I do have the iso country code list but no States for some countries.
Thanks in advance
Thanks Guys,
I got all the the countries and states of all of them, but no zip codes.
http://27.org/isocountrylist/iso_country_list.sql
This contains all countries, and there iso-3166 codes ( Siberia code needs to be changed from "CS" to "RS")
And here is the FIPS file for countries with states
http://www.maxmind.com/app/fips_include
For zip code validation I am using
http://www.geonames.org webservices
There is a geonames ruby gem as well, which makes it really simple to do zipcode validations
Hope that helps anybody who needs this information, worth keeping it handy for web projects.
Another Link ( thanks #laise ): http://dev.maxmind.com/static/csv/codes/maxmind/region.csv
The Carmen plugin is almost certainly what you're looking for.
This will take a little legwork and data munging, but it's not too bad.
Countries and country codes are easy to come by. Sounds like you already have them.
Not all countries are divided into states. You may have to simply address these one by one-- there may be some combined reference, but not that I know of.
U.S. cities are available, and look for things like FIPS codes. There are commercial data providers that will provide you clean, well-organized data, but they are charging for it.
The post office has some databases with all the zip codes. Note that these charge periodically, and a single zip code doesn't imply a single single (far from it!). And it may not be necessary to actually have a database of all of them, as there are zip verification/correction services available for free.
For loading the data, check out a recent railscast on the subject.
I was looking for the same and found this resource. I hope somebody serves well as me.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/world-setup/en/index.html
For those using the FIPS 10-4/FIPS 5-2 standard, I have been maintaining the NGA GEC (formerly FIPS 10-4/5-2) Excel spreadsheet (original format) for 1st level administrative divisions of countries. The spreadsheet is currently updated to Update 15 (March 2014):
http://www.opengeocode.org/archive.php

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