There is a story on the FP website, discussing Diagnos, a company that helps predict where to drill, and Franco-Nevada, a mining royalty business operator. basically, Diagnos offers their services for a royalty share of the operation of a company.

The story ends with Mr Laurante (owner of Diagnos) saying:

But Mr. Larente is seeing the benefits of collecting royalties: His crown jewel is a royalty on the highly prospective McFauld's Lake region in the James Bay Lowlands, which he collected from MacDonald Mines Exploration Ltd.

The exploration in that region is still in its very early stages, so he is nowhere close to collecting money from his royalty. That doesn't mean it isn't valuable. "We exchanged service fees for it, so in our books it was maybe $50,000," he says. "I've turned down $1-million for it."

Now that sounds like an endorsement. Hopefully, this exposure in the FP will help lure in more new investors.

As I looked for more information on Diagnos, I found an article about the software, and that is has already been used in the ML area:

This tool for processing data and used by Diagnos has already proved useful in exploration. In 2005, Diagnos as mandated by Resources KWG Inc., carried out an analysis using the system CARDS [Computer Aided Resource Detection Software] of all the data covering the lake McFauld area in Ontario. This analysis made it possible to locate a priority target for base metal concentration located outside the KWG property but which exactly coincided with the new discovery that Noront was announcing in September 2005 (Press release of Diagnos, October 18, 2007). - source: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release...

Anyone know whether any other JVs are using Diagnos technology to predict drill locations in ML?