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Fairport News
Historical FTI news articles and PRESS RELEASES
Download PDF - Get PDF Viewer hereMARCH 2007
IN THIS ISSUE
| Welcome |
Once again we welcome all our new and old clients and especially those of you reading the Fairport News for the first time!
We hope you all have an enjoyable Easter break and hope that the season ahead is a good one for all concerned. It was pleasing to see that the "rural confidence” graph published recently by the Rabobank for Australia was rising steeply. Let’s hope this optimism is well founded.
| Rogers Ramblings |
While the drought in Australia has had an effect on the sales activity “out there”, here in the Fairport office things have been as hectic as ever. Colin has been wearing out a track between here and Adelaide as he goes backwards and forwards across the Nullarbor to visit Hardy Wines, Fosters Wines and various other clients in South Australia.
I made a quick trip to Brisbane in February to visit our friends at AACo and yet another trip over to see Landcorp in New Zealand earlier this month.
PAM 6. This is the version number of the upcoming PAM release that we have been working on for around a year. This get a mention later in this newsletter and noticed also that Paul Olsen of AgIT mentions it in his section under Dealer News. Due to all the work going into this version, there is not the usual list of features added to PAM that have become a familiar feature of the Fairport News.
We have also been working towards a mid-tier PAM program series called “PAM Central”. Over the past few years several clients have installed PAM on a special network server that has allowed them to share PAM over a wide area. People can log in via the internet or some sort of Virtual Private Network system. Configuring and supporting this system is obviously far more complex that the standard farm office version of PAM As a result of these complexities, we have set a new name and a new pricing structure for this PAM Central model. This product is aimed at the market niche between the standard PAM “desktop” systems and the PAM Enterprise system.
If you are looking to “Wide Area Network” a PAM system, we now provide several options to suit your needs and budget. One of the upcoming PAM Central options will be to assign a user a “Reporter Only” role. This will be ideal for city based owners who want to keep abreast of what is happening on their properties.
See later in this newsletter articles about PAM Crop QA data and Pocket PAM Over the ‘Net. You can see that there has been plenty going on here in the recent months.
STAFF MATTERS
Recently Edin Alispahic left us. He had been with us for around 15 months.
Edin found that his interests lie in computer hardware rather than software development, so he has moved on to more hardware prolific pastures! We wish him well and will miss his good natured humour.
Meanwhile, Gerard van den Berg, who joined the Fairport Team last August has flown to South Africa with his fiancée, Laura to get married on Table Mountain in Cape Town. Gerard’s family live in Cape Town. He is taking a three week break including a honey moon on a secluded island off Thailand. We all wish him and Laura well.
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| PAM News |
PAM 6 GETTING CLOSER
The substantially enhanced PAM system that we mentioned in the December News is getting closer to release. For several weeks we have had a team of extremely helpful PAM clients giving a good work-out. This has proven to be very worthwhile process.
Things coming in PAM 6 include full livestock editing – meaning data can be entered out of order and back dated, deleted etc. Substantial work has been done in the IAR module, the mapping module and elsewhere. Of course, all Fairport Club members will be entitled this upgrade when it becomes availablePOCKET PAM OVER THE 'NET
The processes used to develop this PAM Crop QA upload system evolved out of our “over the internet” Pocket PAM synchronisation system.
This system is currently in use with Pacific Seeds in Toowoomba. PacSeeds gather crop related data from various points around Australia using Pocket PAM, then transfer the data to the central PAM EE server in Toowoomba using the “over the ‘net” synchronisation system.
PAM ON WINDOWS VISTA
To get an up to date account of how anf if PAM and our other software operate on the new Windows Vista operating system, go to the Support page of the Fairport Web Site.
http://www.fairport.com.au/Support/VistaFairport.asp
PAM CROP QA UPLOAD
Yet another development completed here over the past 12 months.
This system enables farmers using the standard PAM farm office system to upload cropping related data to a central PAM Enterprise system.
The uploading process is a simple few mouse clicks and works using the internet as the data carrier. The system has been built with QA in mind. No financial data or costs and income of production data is transferred to the central PAM EE server. The central server PAM EE system can be accessed via the internet from anywhere thus enabling auditors to check farm records without leaving their desk.
If a system like this appeals to you, contact Colin Booth here at Fairport on +61 8 93675814
PAM ENTERPRISE
The PAM Enterprise (or PAM EE as we call it) versions operate with the Microsoft SQL Server database system and allow for much larger data sets, centralised and combined datasets and virtually unlimited concurrent users.
Enterprise options and pricing are available upon request from Fairport.
Colin has been extremely busy preparing PAM EE quotes for prospective clients both here and in other parts of the world … as far away as Greece and Honduras! Many prospective PAM EE clients are “in the pipeline” at one stage or another. If you think you organisation could benefit from a PAM EE system, please enquire.
Work on PAM EE enhancements continues at a pace with requests still coming in from all clients.
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| Grape Foreacster News |
The interest in our Grape Forecaster products (Desktop and handheld software) has been increasing this year. Sales have been made into Canada and South Africa in recent weeks.
Many of our longer term Grape Forecaster clients are now beginning to gain good value from it. Some have reported quite amazing accuracies with their yield estimates.
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Pasture Watch / Pastures From Space News
The pricing structure for the Pastures from Space data for Season 2007 is as follows.
Areas up to 4000ha = $299 plus GST
Areas over 4000ha = $500 plus GSTPrices now apply to one calendar year 1st January to 31st December.
The Fairport Team would like to sincerely thank everyone that subscribed to the Pastures from Space service for 2006.
The area of coverage for eastern Australia has increased to encompass the region from Rockhampton to Ceduna – including Tasmania. It must be stressed however, that the “ground truthing” process has not been fully undertaken for the eastern half of Australia.
Due to cost to Fairport of running the data delivery service and the annual enhancements to the Pasture Watch software, we are setting a price on the Pasture Watch software from April 1st this year. Pasture Watch will cease to be free software from that date and will be priced at $880 (inc GST).
Enhancements to Pasture Watch this year include a rainfall “tweaker” – which enables you to enter your weekly rainfall for each farm. This value can be used to adjust the calculated Pasture Growth Rates which are delivered to you based on Bureau of Meteorology rainfall data for your district. Obviously your local rainfall can sometimes differ from the district average. This new features should result in much more accurate PGR values for your farm.
| Dealer News |
FarmTek Australia VIC - SA - TAS
With the season the way it is, again PAM is a prooving to be an invaluable tool in assisting with whole farm planning and utilizing PAM budgets to provide forecasts for 2007 and 2008 seasons.FarmBis funding is now available in Victoria, SA and Tasmania for PAM training.
We have run the following training scheduled over the past few weeks
SA 20-23 March.
Getting Started – Clare Tafe
Int. – Advance - Clare Tafe
And will be running the following soon:
NSW 26-30 March + 2-13 April
On:farm
Narandera, Brocklesby,
Wagga Wagga, AlburyTAS 30 April – 5 May
Details yet to be finalizedVIC – 1on1 On farm available
Call 0429930770 for further information
The Training request is still on-line at www.fairport.com.au so please keep the request coming in to assist us in scheduling training in your area.
Wishing everybody a safe and happy Easter break; until June.
Joanne Richardson
FarmTek Australia
~ 1300 553 446
Email: Joanne@farmtek.com.au
Farm Business Systems - SE South Australia
SE South Australia has now got a new Fairport dealer. With the retirement of long standing Mt Gambier dealer, Chris McGowan, an opportunity emerged for long time PAM dealer and trainer Greg Dearman to put shoulder to grindstone.Greg has been dealing and training PAM users for Fairport Technologies for over 12 years and has been a ‘sleeper’ in the Millicent area since moving to Millicent in his role as an agronomist/consultant with Millicent Farm Supplies.
Greg uses PAM for data recording, mapping and recommendations for his agronomy clients. Formulating budgets and Gross Margins is another feature used regularly as new crop, pasture and livestock opportunities emerge and require detailed evaluation. Pocket PAM helps speed on-farm visits, data recording and documentation response times and the new 3G mobile technology promises even more as a single PDA can now include Phone, GPS and Pocket PAM functionality. This technology will be even more useful when 3G network coverage is up to scratch.
Horticulture activity in the South East area provides opportunities for Grape Forecaster, PAMAusVit and PAMUltraCrop products from the Fairport Technologies stable.
Greg specialises in personal one-on-one set-up and training, conducted in addition to group sessions.
Greg has developed an alliance with Millicent based, Home and Office Computing’s Nigel McLennan who provides PAM support and a highly regarded computer hardware and networking service.
Greg Dearman
Farm Business Systems Pty Ltd
P.O.Box 45, Millicent SA 5280
Mobile: 0427 823 845
greg.dearman@bigpond.com
Nigel McLennan
Millicent Home and Office Computing
14a George St, Millicent, SA 5280
Mobile: 0428 332848 Office: 87 333908 Agbis NSW & QLD
nigelmac@internode.on.net
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The last 3 months has seen quite a bit of travelling for training from Sydney right up to Ayr in North Queensland. Training is year round and don’t forget that there is FarmBis subsidy available in Queensland.
Great to see Sugar Cane growers enthusiastic about the management of their production data and showing interest in Australia’s favourite primary production data management system – PAM QA Plus.
PAM Version 6!!!
We have been talking to growers a lot over the last 12 months about the looming new release and the additional functionality that will be included.. things like:
- FULL livestock editing, enter livestock records when you like and edit historical records with no problem.
- Much improved contact list
- The ability to draw exclusion areas (salt effected, rocky or tree’d) in mapping without having to draw into the paddock boundary
- Great new functionality for semi-perennial crops like Sugar Cane and Lucerne.
- and stacks more…Ag IT upcoming events:
Moree cotton field day at the end of May.
Ag IT will be the first ever software display at the BSES field day in Mackay on the 17th & 18th of May.The new PAM Central software will be a great investment for many Agribusinesses and corporate growers. Give your managers the ability to enter production records via the internet to the PAM database located in the main office.
We are also getting a lot of interest from government and private organisations in regard to PAM Enterprise to give full auditability for data entry and enterprise strength database and functionality.
Have a great Easter and look forward to seeing or speaking to you soon.
Ag IT
2-8 Serengetti Drive
MUNRUBEN QLD 4125
Ph/Fax: (07) 3802 1458
Mobile: 0419 727 086
Sales & Support: 1800 658 998
email: paul@agit.com.au
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A big thankyou goes out to all of you who came to see us at this years Wagin Woolorama
Now is the time to get organised and fine tune your PAM skills before the season starts
If you need training, Booth Technology has been running PAM Training Seminars at our Perth Office during the last week of every monthUp and coming PAM Training Seminars at our Cottesloe Office in Perth
Monday 23rd April – PAM Seminar
Tuesday 24th April – PAM Mapping SeminarOn the road again… PAM Training and On Farm Demonstrations
Stephen Jasper is heading to Bruce Rock, Tammin, Kellerberrin and Merridin from Monday 2nd April to Friday 6th April
Ben Coman is heading to West Arthur, Wagin, Woodanilling, Katanning and Kojonup from Monday 16th April to 20th April
For more information please call Booth Technology on
(08) 9383 4443Stephen Jasper – 0415 133 725
Ben Coman – 0414 408 458
sales@boothtech.com.au
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| In Closing |
The Fairport Team wishes all our clients and friends the best for 2007 season
... Unitl June !
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FTI |