One of my biggest frustrations is that we don’t have the resources to cover high tech companies outside of Boise.

But I know they’re out there and every once I a while I run across a fascinating company that I had never heard of.

Today while I was doing my morning Google ritual, I ran across a story from the Central Valley Business Times in Stockton, Calif. that mentioned an Idaho company called Pine Creek Precision.

It’s based in Kendrick, which I’ll admit I had to go to the atlas to find. Kendrick is a town of about 400 people 20 miles northeast of Lewiston.

PineCreek sells an unmanned air system, which is essentially a remote-controlled plane, fitted with a crop cam. The plane can be programmed in an auto pilot mode to fly a certain flight path.

While flying it takes high-resolution images in both color and infrared images. The images can then be fed into a software program, which will tell the farmer things like how much water or fertilizer is used in a particular area.

What I like about this company is that it’s a tech company, but it’s focusing on agriculture.

These types of companies are a perfect example of why the old ag versus tech argument is so ridiculous. Technology is everywhere and in probably every industry in the state.

Another example of that is a company called Bully Dog based in Aberdeen, which from what I’ve been told started building electronics to get more power and efficiency out of farm equipment.

Today the company makes all kinds of high tech performance equipment to get more power out of trucks and cars. If you watch any of the car and truck shows on television or read any of the magazines, you’ve probably heard about Bully Dog.

Both those companies are on my wish list for a larger story when I can eek some travel money out of my newspaper.

Before I close, I wanted to touch on KTVB's interview with Micron CEO Steve Appleton.

I must have missed it last week, but as I was watching the much-hyped coverage, I heard something about another exclusive story on Friday about Micron’s potential new fabrication plant and what it could mean for Boise. But I didn’t see the story and couldn’t find anything on the Web site, so if anyone happened to catch it I would be curious about what they said.

One other thing I was surprised about with the KTVB coverage is that they took the time and spent the money to go to the analyst conference, but I didn’t see one interview with any of the more than 40 analysts they said were there. I wonder why?