Farmers will plant the most acres in a generation this year, led by the biggest corn crop since World War II, taking advantage of the highest agricultural prices in at least four decades.Dish subscribers will soon be able to watch live satellite TV on their mobile devices at no extra cost.
Dish Network Corp. is planning to offer the feature on the iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and BlackBerry devices in September and on phones using Google Inc.’s Android system in October.
Subscribers will need special hardware. One option is Sling Media Inc.’s SlingBox, which retails for $180 to $300.
Vonage makes free Facebook app
Vonage, a pioneer of home phone service over the Internet, has a new application for the iPhone and Android phones that provides free calls between Facebook users.
Vonage Mobile for Facebook is available as a free download for iPhone, iPod Touch and Android phone users. They sign in with their Facebook username and see a list of Facebook friends who also have the app. Tapping a name places a call to the friend, whose phone rings. The app doesn’t need to be running on the friend’s phone for the call to go through.
Games defeat e-mail as online time eater
For the first time, games have overtaken e-mail as Americans’ No. 2 online time killer, according to new research from the Nielsen Co.
But not surprisingly, blogs and social networks – Facebook, mostly – are still what Americans spend the biggest chunk of their online time scouring.
Of the nearly 24 hours of time that Americans on average spent online during June, 23 percent was on social networks and blogs, Nielsen found.
Games, meanwhile, accounted for more than 10 percent of Internet users’ total time online in June, up from 9 percent last year. E-mail, on the other hand, counts for just 8 percent of Americans’ Internet time, down from nearly 12 percent last June.
