The Prospector – Daily Constraints

416-621-9348 cgreaves@chrisgreaves.com
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This page serves to introduce a few select colleagues to an experimental prospecting service.

The service is FREE

- and you can opt out any time you want; just reply to an email with "Thanks, but No Thanks".

Some of you know that since last June I have been tapping in to Canada News Wire to establish one new prime prospect per day.

I can't read 400 news releases per day; there isn't enough coffee in the world.

But my little WeatherVain tool does a fine job of extracting 2 to 4 perfect news stories.

You can read more

- by following the links from the table of contents at the foot of this page.

Since I already download the 400 stories per day to my hard drive, I thought to explore just how versatile was the constraint engine.

For that I need YOU – a willing volunteer.

Each day I will search the day's harvest of news stories, and where one or more, but not more than 5, match YOUR CONSTRAINTS, I'll send you a single email with hyperlinks to the specific stories.

I know, I know, If something is too good to be true ….

You have to get involved!

Your email will arrive with a small header that looks like this:

Visit www.ChrisGreaves.com for this image! Prospecting_005.JPG

The first few lines show the constraints that I have entered for you.

One line shows how many items were found for you.

I will never send you more than 5 links.

You can fine-tune your results by emailing to me a better set of constraints; Phone me 4166219348 Between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. EST and I'll walk you through the process.

Constraints – ANY

The word ANY, followed by a series of words or phrases, tells me that a news story with one or more of these words is a candidate.

Constraints – ALL

The word ALL, followed by a series of words or phrases, tells me that a news story remains a candidate as long as it contains at least one instance of every one of these words.

Constraints – NOT

The word NOT, followed by constraint tells me to negate the results.

Example 1

Here is an example of my own constraints, looking for high-powered executives in serious-money firms within public-transit range of my home office.

,any,TORONTO,MISSISSAUGA
,any,financial,Banks, Insurance, Pharmaceuticals, Investment
,any,CEO,CFO
,any,investment,funds,equity,financial,marketing,private,corporate,million,billion
,any,ceo,cfo,economist,strategist,development

Example 2

Here is another example of my own constraints, looking for high-powered executives in serious-money firms within public-transit range of my home office, but especially not multi-provincial firms.

,all,Marketing
,any,investment,funds,equity,financial,marketing,private,corporate,million,billion
,any,ceo,cfo,economist,strategist,development
,all,toronto,contact
,not,any,vancouver,alberta,saskatchewan,montreal,quebec

Example 3

Here is how your constraints might appear in your email message.

Instead of two ROWS of constraints, you see the two constraints separated by a semi-colon.

Don't worry about that too much; I'll be keying in the constraints for you. Just let me know by phone or email how you think you'd like them tweaked.

,any,training,manager,help desk;,any,Skills Development

Please see also : Prospecting Service2

The Points System

"How does one know whether and why their points decrease by 5,1 or 0 points per item? I think a user would want to know what the conditions would be that would result in loses 5 pts vs. not losing any for example."

Good Question.

1) If your number of items found is greater than 5, you lose 5 points.

2) Otherwise, if your Items found is 3, 4 or 5, you lose 1 point.

3) Otherwise if your Items found is 0, 1 or 2, you lose no points.

The scoring was instituted to encourage people to fine-tune their constraints.

It is my contention that for a source such as Canada News Wire, 2 hits per day is more than we can reasonably manage. More than 2 hits a day carries a penalty, and more than 5 suggests that the search constraints are insufficiently tuned to be of any serious value.

Toronto and Mississauga, Monday, August 16, 2010 6:54 PM