C.O.R.N. to Go..... Moving Beyond the Traditional Newsletter.

The C.O.R.N. (Crop Observation and Recommendation Network) newsletter is a product of the Ohio State University Extension Agronomic Crops Team. We pride ourselves on getting crop observations and recommendations out first to growers so they can react appropriately. Since the early years of the newsletter we have been asked to provide more – pictures, background, speed, enhanced appearance as well as more localized information. But in order to communicate quickly and easily we still take the simple route for the newsletter – it is designed to be received quickly over a telephone modem. However with the advent of higher-speed connections in rural areas we have added several new ways of getting the newsletter and localized reports. Today we provide on our website (http://corn.osu.edu) the ability to download the newsletter to a PDA, or the option of collecting an audio file to listen to the newsletter on an iPod or other mp3 player and links to regional crop and weather reports. Web activity has increased greatly in the past five years, we now receive over 36,000 site hits per month.