RFA Ethanol Podcast

Ag in the Cloud

Chuck Zimmerman

You are hearing a lot about working in the cloud these days. Why not the agribusiness industry? Onsite, fueled by AgIntegrated, has an answer to the question. Onsite provides the connections you need to handle 21st century farming. As a consumer of an increasing amount of agricultural information and technologies, you experience the headaches involved in managing separate systems. Onsite …

Agribusiness, Internet

Few Ag Names on Dot Domain List

Cindy Zimmerman

There’s no dots for agriculture, corn, or cows on the list of nearly 2000 new generic top-level domain (or gTLD) name applications announced yesterday by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). There’s .beer but not .beef, there’s .porn but not .pork, there’s .soy but not .soybean. There is .farm on the list, by one of several companies …

Internet

President Exec Order To Speed Up Broadband Dev

Chuck Zimmerman

Today President Obama will sign a new executive order to make broadband construction cheaper and easier according to the White House. This would mean more people in more places can join the AgWired community! The Executive Order (EO) will require the Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, Interior, Transportation, and Veterans Affairs as well as the US Postal Service to offer …

Internet

Rural Broadband Opportunities

Chuck Zimmerman

You could look at this map and see lots of black areas that show there is no local broadband coverage and think negatively. Or you could see these areas as opportunities like the FCC does. This is an interactive map released last week showing areas with “potential” for broadband support via a program as described in their release. I agree …

Internet

Gov’t. Agencies Say LightSquared System Can’t Work With GPS

Chuck Zimmerman

Things are looking bleak for the proposed LightSquared LTE network according to a story in PC World. A key federal agency involved in testing the proposed LightSquared LTE network has concluded that there is no practical way to solve interference between that network and GPS, possibly dealing a crippling blow to the startup carrier’s hopes for a terrestrial mobile network. …

Internet

Lightsquared Solution To GPS Concerns Not Well Received By Industry

Chuck Zimmerman

Yesterday Lightsquared announced a “solution” to concerns over interference with GPS systems from it’s proposed wireless broadband network. LightSquared™, a wholesale carrier building a nationwide wireless broadband network that will create consumer choice and industry innovation, has signed an agreement with Javad GNSS Inc. to develop a system that will eliminate related interference issues for high-precision GPS devices. The Javad …

Equipment, Internet

New USDA-NASS Farm Computer Usage/Ownership Report

Chuck Zimmerman

It’s time to analyze some new data about farm computer use and ownership. USDA’s National Agricultural Statistic Service has released a new report, “Farm Computer Usage and Ownership, August 2011.” Here’s the opening summary. It’s interesting to see that dialup access has dropped in half since the last report in 2009. Also note how high the percentages get as you …

Farming, Internet, USDA

Lightsquared Threat To GPS

Chuck Zimmerman

I spent a lot of my career in the broadcasting business and never saw the Federal Communications Commission take action like they have been on the proposal from a company called Lightsquared to utilize high-powered, close-proximity transmissions from a network of ground stations that would cause substantial interference with GPS signals.. It is unheard of for them to allow a …

Agribusiness, Audio, Internet, Precision Agriculture, Technology

Get Interactive With PAQ

Chuck Zimmerman

What’s new in the world wide web? Lots of things. In this week’s program I’m sharing a conversation with Quentin Rund, PAQ Interactive. Quentin’s company is putting on the InfoAg Conference that’s taking place right now in Springfield, IL. We sat down and chatted about websites, apps and social media. PAQ Interactive is a technology services company specializing in Web …

Audio, Internet, ZimmCast