Intelligent Agents Keep a Watchful Eye on Green Initiatives… For You

by Gina

Everything seems to be “green” these days… There’s “green investing”, “green energy goals”, “green collar jobs”, “green building certification”, “green funds”, “green companies”, “green cars”… And let’s not forget about that “green” that fuels the economy…

Keeping on top of all the “green” developments can be overwhelming. Every time I read the news, check out the latest hot topics in an industry publication or surf the blogs, I come across some kind of “green” story. Like many, I try to do my part. I’m as “green aware” as I can be. My “green” efforts are reflected in many aspects of my life and I have to admit that I like to keep up on the new programs that promote “green” grants, stimulus packages, and guidelines.

Green Resources are Abundant

I recently went to a seminar focused on green collar jobs and green building initiatives. You can imagine the lengthy reference list of online sources that was given to me (as a printed hand-out if you can believe it) so that I could stay on top of “green” initiatives and announcements. Potentially, there were hundreds of resources for me to monitor but no two sources were identical in navigation or layout or format.

So, I went through the lengthy list of “green” resources given to me at the seminar and identified two sources that reported headlines and news that mattered to me. Unfortunately, the site didn’t have any kind of RSS feed option or subscription option. Now, I don’t know about the rest of you but, I’m pretty busy so there is no way that I’m going to remember to go and check that site every few days for new developments, headlines or initiatives. I decided to train an Agent on these 2 sources and have any new postings sent to me automatically. In a matter of 2 minutes (really, in barely 2 minutes), I trained an Agent to monitor the State and Local Climate and Energy and the National Action Plan for Energy Efficiency pages and send me any new stories that get posted to these pages. In this case, I just want the posting date and linked headline to the full story but, I could have trained my Agent to send me the entire story as well.

Connotate Agents go Green

Anybody Can Stay “Green Aware”

I don’t have a programming background… I don’t know how to write code…. But, I do know how to point-and-click so I had the skill-set required to monitor the EPA site each day for new “green” news that focuses on energy efficiency. Now I just sit back and wait for my Agents to shoot me an email with any new headlines as they hit the EPA web pages.

Now this is a pretty simple example of what an Agent can do in the “green” arena. Imagine that there are hundreds (thousands) of sources out there like the two pages I’m monitoring. Imagine you’re interested in “green” investments or new “green” job postings – you can have Agents monitoring all the sources for you and keep you “green” aware.

Create Your Own Green Agents

Want to train your own Agents or subscribe to the ones that I’ve created? Try Connotate’s On Demand Community Trial free for 2 weeks. See how easy it is to train Agents to monitor almost any web source and report changes back to you.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 5th, 2009 at 9:22 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

One Response to “Intelligent Agents Keep a Watchful Eye on Green Initiatives… For You”

Jim Farrell Says:
October 6th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
Good Blog post Gina, I like the innovative way to stay informed. Thought it was interesting all the paper given to you at a “Green Seminar”

I look forward to your future post.

Jim Farrell
Single Throw

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Intelligent Agents Keep a Watchful Eye on Green Initiatives… For You

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Intelligent Agents Keep a Watchful Eye on Green Initiatives… For You

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