Well, i am currently working on a project called Drumnet. Drumnet is a platform that seeks to provide farmers with an ecosystem where their input marketing is synchronized by their out put marketing. Kenya is dependent on Agriculture. To provide farmers with the necessary tools to make informed decisions is very important.
The software has a mapping component. Here is where i come in. Since it is a closed system, We are providing a link to Google Shared maps. The ideal situation would have been to use the Google maps api, but as we all know, Google does not want log in restrictions. We on the other hand need them since we need to identify the different farmers. The system is complete, except for a couple of bugs. Of late i have been travelling up and down to train Agrovets, who will in turn train farmers(their clients). Well, spatial data is a very useful means through which management information can be represented. Question is why not to farmers? Well, from my farmers training, through the system, it was their first time to hear or even learn of Google maps. For some it was their first time before a computer.
This is the challenge, where to begin. Before moving to training spatial applications one has to ensure that they have some grounding on computers. This is not easy and takes longer for them to grasp. Some of the very common maps functionality we take little time to execute, actually take ages in the case of farmers. why, well they first need a grounding on computers.
Then came the idea, i do not want to keep traveling to train a new set of farmers every now and then. Then came to my mind, is there a way through which native mobile phones eg 3310 Nokia, may be used to transfer and share spatial information? Maps are practically graphs, native C++ libraries got graphs, why not the case for non smart phones? Just a thought? what are your views?
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