Precision Laboratories is proud to announce that their Mix Tank app received AgProfessional Readers’ Choice Top Product of the Year as the most innovative product to reach the market in 2011.

The free Mix Tank app, available on iPhone and iPod touch, offers the first of its kind assistance in determining the accurate mixing sequence for crop protection products, adjuvants and foliar nutrition products – helping growers get the most out of every tank mix.

In its fifth annual contest, the Readers’ Choice Award highlights the top products over the past year with the most potential to impact the agricultural industry as chosen by AgProfessional readers. The Mix Tank app outranked nine other new products that were selected by the publication’s editors and opened to online reader voting.

“We are honored to receive this award from AgProfessional magazine,” said Jim Reiss, vice president of Agricultural Chemistries at Precision Laboratories. “To know that the readers have selected Mix Tank as the No. 1 new product for 2011 is an indication that our continuing dedication to providing customers with innovative and “Best of Class” products is right on track.”

The Mix Tank app helps agricultural retailers, crop specialists, university researchers and growers avoid tank mix problems before they happen. Improper mixing sequence of crop protection products can lead to compatibility problems and nozzle plugging. The app eliminates the guess work by ensuring effective use of all chemicals-saving them time and money.

Mix Tank has a database of more than 900 crop protection products from over 17 manufacturers that continues to increase in size. Users have the ability to share their recommended mixing orders through email, Facebook and Twitter and to request that additional crop protection products be added to the database. To download the free app, visit www.mixtankapp.com or search for “Mix Tank” on the iTunes App Store.

About Precision Laboratories
Precision Laboratories is a leading provider of specialized chemistries applied to plants, seeds, soil and water to maximize resource and biological performance potential while stewarding the environment. For more information on the company’s products and its value-added dealers, call             800-323-6280      or visit www.precisionlab.com.

LAFAYETTE and WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – Farmers can better predict corn yields throughout the year using a site-specific Web application developed and commercialized by Advanced Ag Solutions LLC, an affiliate of the Purdue Research Park.

Daryl Starr, founder of Advanced Ag Solutions, said Optimizer 2.0 provides farmers with data through a daily text message and a Web login portal. Messages include the projected corn yield and the most limiting factor for their farm.

“Projections are made based on variety of seed, soil type, weather data and other limiting factors,” he said. “If the limiting factor is water, farmers know they need to irrigate their fields. If it’s nitrogen, they know they need to apply nitrogen to their fields.”

Farmers sign up for Optimizer 2.0 by going to http://www.optmzr.co or texting their ZIP code to 765-560-4130. Once they submit their information, they will immediately receive a confirmation text message.

Starr said there are two levels of subscriptions available.

“Farmers who sign up for the free service receive an alert about their county’s standard practices, which includes average soil type, seed variety and rates, and planting date. They also receive a link to a mobile website that displays the information,” he said. “Paying subscribers receive customized information about their fields and a website login to view daily updated information and a visual representation of the information overlaid on a Google map.”

Optimizer 2.0 pulls in data from several sources and organizes them in a database.

“We receive soil data, data about farmers’ fields, seed data from different varieties, weather and other factors that affect crop yield. All these factors go into making crop yield predictions,” Starr said. “We also receive information from farmers and actual weather conditions that replace the historic data. Optimizer 2.0 recalculates and adjusts the predicted yield so the daily text message is as accurate as possible when it is delivered.”

Although Optimizer 2.0 focuses solely on corn production, Starr said information about other crops may soon be available.

“We have a soybean model on the shelf, but we first want the industry to grasp the impact a site-specific crop model can have,” he said. “Our accuracy is high, but more importantly, timely decisions can be made more easily now.”

A video produced by Advanced Ag Solutions that shows how to subscribe to Optimizer can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/user/darylbstarr

About Advanced Ag Solutions LLC

Advanced Ag Solutions LLC (http://www.advancedagsolutions.com) specializes in helping high-tech, progressive farmers grow their business through precision agronomic and economic data collection, analysis and consulting.

About Purdue Research Park

The Purdue Research Park (http://www.purdueresearchpark.com), with four locations across Indiana, has the largest university-affiliated business incubation complex in the country. The parks are home to about 200 companies that employ 4,000 people and are located in West Lafayette, Indianapolis, Merrillville and New Albany.

Purdue Research Park contact: Steve Martin, 765-588-3342, sgmartin@prf.org

Source: Daryl Starr, 888-512-4890, daryl@advancedagsolutions.com

Clicking on soil sketches sends the user to the corresponding Official Series Description, a user-friendly narrative of commonly used soil properties such as horizon depths, colors, texture and rock fragment content. Clicking on a soil name provides the user with a more detailed description, including: physical and chemical properties, definitions and links to a variety of environmental databases.

The SoilWeb app is a portable version of the UC Davis California Soil Resource Lab’s Web-based interface to digital soil survey data from USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service.

The iPad is the leader, with over 50% of the market, but a flood of new Android models are grabbing market share. While these devices offer some unique advantages for mobile connectivity, gaming, social networking, and entertainment, are they practical for agricultural applications?  There is not a lot of research on farmer adoption of tablets. Farmer use of Smartphones is on the rise, and there is some indication of tablet use, but it is just too early to get a good read on if farmers are moving to this new platform. For the past month, I have been working with a tablet from Verizon and have a few thoughts on tablet application for farming operations.

The first and obvious advantage is the screen size. Ten inch screens are the standard today, but there are several new models with 8 inch and 5 inch displays.  These areas which are much larger than a Smartphone screen provide vast improvements in reading data, entering data, and in viewing charts and graphs, weather radar images, and videos.  Most newer models have a front-facing camera that can be used for video conferences and other face-to-face communications. In addition, a tablet can do just about everything your Smartphone can do, except make a phone call.  Although, if you use Skype or some other on line phone service, you could use the tablet for this.

While the extra viewable real estate is nice, it also means this is not a one-handed device like a Smartphone. This can be an issue when using a tablet and operating a piece of farm equipment. Tablets work very well while laying flat on a table or desk, but there are not a lot of flat surfaces inside tractor or combine cabs. The thinner and lighter models can be managed single-handedly after some practice, so keep that in mind when choosing a tablet. Perhaps some innovative farmer will invent an adapter for tablet and computer use in the cab.

Connectivity

Most tablets come with WiFi connectivity, while this is useful at Starbucks, in the middle of a corn field it is not. Thus, you will want a tablet with connectivity to a wireless provider like Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, or others. The model I have been using the XYBoard by Motorola for Verizon.  It has 4G LTE connectivity and is amazingly fast.  Internet, e-mail, the HAT app, and video material had quick and reliable access.  It has a built in hotspot so you can connect other WiFi devices and get 4G LTE speed. We used it to get our broadcast equipment on-line during the Fort Wayne Farm Show.  While 4G is not everywhere today, it will be in the not too distant future, so in my opinion it is worth the investment.

Hardware connectivity is another matter.  Most tablets use a micro USB connection and a micro SD card.  Some have no provision for an SD card, so beware. If you want to move large amounts of data from your main computer to the tablet or vise-versa, this is an issue.  Toshiba makes one of the few tablets with full size USB and SD card connections. Battery life is another issue. If you will be spending long hours away from the office, make sure your tablet has a long battery life. Six hours is sort of a minimum, with ten or more being outstanding. The speed of your processor and what you are doing with the tablet will have a big impact on how long the power will last.

With the exception of the iPad, most of the non-Apple tablets look very similar. The real difference is in the operating system. The Android marketplace is awash in new OS.  Google has been cranking out a variety of yummy tasting systems with names like Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich.  This is most likely one of the most important decisions you have to make when choosing a tablet because each OS has different capabilities and a different look and feel.  The techies tell me each new version is better and closer to perfection. Microsoft is coming out with Windows 8, an OS for computers and tablets.  It will be based on touch screen technology that is at the heart of the tablet.

So, is a tablet ready for the combine? For most farmers, I say not yet. If you check your e-mail, text, and follow the markets, news, and weather occasionally, then a Smartphone is cheaper and easier to handle. If however, you spend a lot of time on-line and work with spreadsheets, documents, do video conference calls, or like to watch movies or play Angry Birds during those long days in the field, then a tablet is worth the investment.   As for which one, the iPad is a great product but Android is catching up fast and offers more choices and lower prices.

Did not see a lot of tablets in use at the convention. Saw this news from a mobile blog that indicates that Android is alive and well. Smartphone Farming is currently evaluating an Android tablet. We will have a review in the next few weeks.

Android tablets nab 39 percent of global market share

News by Dan Seifert on

Global Tablet Shipments Q4 2011

A new report from Strategy Analytics claims that Android tablets garnered a record 39 percent of the global tablet market in Q4 2011, a 150 percent increase from the previous year.

Total global tablet shipments in Q4 are said to be 26.8 million units, with Apple’s iPad claiming 15.4 million of those, or 58 percent of the market. Total Android tablet shipments were 10.5 million for the quarter, which was likely boosted by low-cost newcomers like Amazon’s Kindle Fire and the Barnes & Noble Nook Tablet.

For the year, tablet shipments totaled 66.9 million, a 260 percent increased from the 18.6 million shipped in 2010. Apple took the lion’s share of those as well. Microsoft has yet to become a player in the tablet market, claiming only 1 percent of global shipments. Strategy Analytics says that the upcoming release of Windows 8, which is designed for both desktop and tablet applications, can’t come soon enough for Microsoft.

If you are looking for some good general reviews on mobile technology check this site out:

http://www.mobileburn.com/

We found the phone to be very fast, with a Dual–Core 1.2 GHz processor and 1 GB of rapid–fire LP DDR2 RAM. We download the HAT app and got amazing speed on market quotes and audio reports. We tested the 4G LTE model and were impressed with the speed of internet processing.  During the farm show, we used the phone to connect our broadcast equipment to the internet to upload programs to our HAT radio stations.

We found reading market quotes or weather radar images was easy on this phone with a 4.3” Super AMOLED Advanced display. In fact, during some of the farm show broadcasts, Andy Eubank used the RAZR and read the markets right off the phone during his radio program. The RAZR also comes with a 8MP rear-facing camera and HD video capture unit. This would be handy for taking photos of field conditions to e-mail to your agronomist.

Razr Thin Phone

The phone boasts of talk time of 12 hours and stand-by time of 8 days. We did not put this to the test, but it did hold a charge longer than my old Android 1 phone.  There are several optional docking station accessories that can turn the phone into a laptop computer, almost. While these adaptors do allow for the connection of many other devices, including a large 10 inch screen, we were not really impressed with them. Though the extra connectivity, with multiple USB ports, is nice and may have some useful applications, overall the extra stuff was not as rugged as the phone and not easy to assemble.

The Hot Spot application that created a local wifi connection came in handy when one of our computers lost its connection with the internet. We fired up the hot spot option on the RAZR and were back on the air in no time.

These phones are incredibly thin and light. It is a bit deceiving that anything this small can be tough, fast, and powerful.  If you are looking for a Smartphone that is tough enough for farm work yet sleek enough for personal use, this may be a good choice.

This blog is a place where the newest wireless hardware and applications will be reviewed and evaluated from the perspective of agriculture. These reviews will be based on actual hands-on experience. Our reviews will not be detailed technical reviews, there are plenty of those other places on-line. The reviews here will be practical evaluations based on the kind of situations farmers face.

Check back here often for the latest produce reviews and evaluations of new agricultural applications. We also invite your comments and evaluations of the Smartphones and apps you use.