Nils Mulvad, one
of the early champions of analytic journalism in Europe and founder of the Danish Institute for Analytic Reporting, demo-ed
a fast web-scrapping tool at the IRE conference this week.  Web-scrapping?  It’s a way to get just the data you need from a web site that has
a dynamic search engine.  The FECinfo site is an example: the user enters
the search terms and the site’s server returns the desired results. 

As a one-off, that works OK.  But what if you need all the data on the
server?  Turn to “RoboSuite.”  It’s a point-and-shoot, build-your-own-script
application.  A good PERL coder can do
the same thing, of course, but if you can afford it, RoboSuite is a fast
solution to data harvesting.