Today, Hasbro and EA announced that the Facebook app EA has been working on for more than six months will be launched later this month, although a version on Pogo (EA’s online casual gaming site) is available today.

There is a Facebook Scrabble app in private beta, but the company is still testing it. It is not clear what is taking EA so long. After all, this is just a Facebook app, not a fully-featured video game like Spore.

It is also not clear what will happen to Scrabulous, the unofficial version of Scrabble that has become one of the most popular apps on Facebook.

Scrabulous, which was developed by two brothers in India, was almost shut down earlier this year because Hasbro claims that it infringes on its trademarks. Scrabulous was in acquisition talks with many different companies, including Electronic Arts (which has the domestic license to digital versions of the game) and Real Networks (which has the international digital rights), but everyone balked on price.

Rather than force Facebook to shut down Scrabulous immediately, however, Hasbro and Electronic Arts realized that they would suffer an extreme backlash if they took away everyone’s favorite Facebook game without offering up an alternative. Now that the alternative is almost here, it remains to be seen whether they will try to eliminate the competition.

  The proportion of households in the UK shopping online has been flat, according to the latest Point Topic survey.   Even though the percentage of UK households who reported shopping online is relatively high—69% in January 2008—this figure has remained largely unchanged over the past 18 months.   Furthermore, in the past six months the number of households in the UK reporting using auction sites actually declined by 4%.   “It is easy to get carried along by the enthusiasm for a dynamic sales channel like the Internet but it’s important to take note of the limits of what is achievable,” said Pamela Varley, research analyst at Point Topic, in a statement released with the survey. “It appears that a ceiling has been reached under the current conditions and retailers will need to ensure their business models reflect this reality. Historically this hasn’t always been the case.”