Automatic Content Generation

[mcai8rw2]

Ooooo! Interesting question.

I write a lot of textual content for website descritions etc.

It's a reall bal* Ache.

Does anyone know of a tool / method to enable me to automatically generate some sort of generice description, based on certain templated sentences or something.

I highly suspect that this isn;t possible in text pad, but there might be something out there I don;t know of yet.

Thank you

[Bob Hansen]

Lacking more specifics, two tools come to mind:

Using spreadsheets like Excel or OpenOffice Calc are one method. You can set up some IF statements to bring in "boiler-plate" strings and combine them together.

Macro Scheduler is an excellent tool than can help you to automate almost any tasks.

[mcai8rw2]

I suppose what I am looking for, in its rawest description, is a method of presenting a piece of software with a list of 10-20 keyphrases, hitting a button, and thus generating a ream [6000 chars or more!] of textual content to use in the marketing.

I've thought about this...generally the phrases can be split into two types either a "product" [e.g. Car Seats] or a "service" [e.g. window cleaning] so a sentence about a product eg "we have a wide range of CAR SEAT items available for you to choose from" would probably NOT fit properly with a service "we have a wide range of WINDOW CLEANING items for you to chose from"

But it would work the other way around "Our WINDOW CLEANING is high quality and cost effective" WOULD fit "Our CAR SEAT is high quality and cost effective.

However this could be getting more and more complicated. It is possible to find sentences that would fit both a product AND a description so there would be no need to classify the phrases separately.

[talleyrand]

Perhaps you could make your own clip library with all the phrases you want. In all the places where you need to put your item, indicate it with \0 The clip library will allow you to keep all your phrases in a permanent location and makes for easier editing.

The use will be quite simple. Copy one to the clipboard and then you can use a regular expression of .* with the replacement being the contents of the clipboard and do a replace all.
Thus you have a file like

WINDOW CLEANING
CAR SEAT

Find what: .*
Replace with: Our \0 is high quality and cost effective

Yields
Our WINDOW CLEANING is high quality and cost effective
Our CAR SEAT is high quality and cost effective

That get you what you need?

[mcai8rw2]

Thanks talleyrand,

That is a good idea but unfortunately it probably wouldn't work. You see the phrases are constantly changing...for each customer there are different phrases.

So for the time taken to make a new clip library of each customers phrases and to do the relevant FIND/REPLACE function; it would be just as quick to write the content manually. Also, the content generated from this method would be all the same, just with different phrases. There needs to be variability in the textual content.

What you suggest is a good idea, just not for this particular application.

In all honesty...I don;t think there is a piece of software / technique out there that does what I need it to...ah well. Prehaps I can make my millions by developing one.

Thanks

[mcai8rw2]

Found IT!

After much trying I discovered a tool that does this job....or as close as possible to it anyway.

its called articlebot and is purchaseable off the internet site. however owing to a major security hole...you can actually get it free.

Any one interested in knowing more...let me know.

Whoo Hoo!

[mcai8rw2]

For those of you that read this thread...after YEARS! [more like a month or so! ] I found just the right program for 'automated content generation" it worked a treat...

I spent a nice long time getting to grips with it and making it work. The VERY next day our product failed and all of a sudden there was no need for that whole side of things anymore.