Although, today there is a tremendous growth in the information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the world, most rural people in developing countries, who typically live in remote areas, suffer from a very limited availability of public information regarding various socio-technical issues such as agriculture, farming technologies, market information, water-related knowledge, weather information etc. The present thesis demonstrates a new kind of ICT system called a mass-customised advice serving system, which can provide, at least potentially, an efficient means of disseminating different kinds of knowledge to such end users. In addition, such systems can provide customised advice to individual users on identified socio-technical issues. The overall goal of these systems is to enable the users to overcome their current poverty by increasing their production and income while at the same time increasing the quality of their environment. Internet and mobile phones are among the most ubiquitous and cheapest of the technologies, which can enhance flows of information. In many parts of the world they have already become inexpensive ways to access and communicate global information. This study focuses on developing an application of mass-customised advice-serving system using mobile phone technology. In most rural communities, farmers live in widely dispersed remote villages where wired-network communication technology is very expensive and vulnerable. Wireless communication technology is considered in this work as the most efficient means to deliver information, knowledge and advising services, as designed using these new ITC system. The demonstrator of a mass-customised advice-serving system developed in this work is intended to provide services in the areas of agricultural farming technology, weather information, market information and water and water-related knowledge, as the main socio-technical requirements of a farmer in a poor society. It also contains an application on crop rotation, which is useful for organic farmers when maintaining soil fertility. This demonstrator has been developed by using Java technology. The Java 2 Micro-Edition (J2ME) Wireless Toolkit and its MIDlet suite was used for the client-side application development (the mobile phone), while at the server side Java servlet technology was used.
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