document: Designing an architecture for delivering mobile information services to the rural developing world Implementing successful rural computing applications requires addressing a number of significant challenges . Recent advances in mobile phone computing capabilities make this device a likely candidate to address the client hardware constraints . Long battery life , wireless connectivity , solid-state memory , low price and immediate utility all make it better suited to rural conditions than a PC . However , current mobile software platforms are not as appropriate . Web-based mobile applications are hard to use , do not take advantage of the mobile phone 's media capabilities and require an online connection . Custom mobile applications are difficult to develop and distribute . To address these limitations we present CAM - a new framework for developing and deploying mobile computing applications in the rural developing world . CAM applications are accessed by capturing barcodes using the mobile phone camera , or entering numeric strings with the keypad . Supporting minimal navigation , direct linkage to paper practices and offline multi-media interaction , CAM is uniquely adapted to rural device , user and infrastructure constraints . To illustrate the breadth of the framework , we list a number of CAM-based applications that we have implemented or are planning . These include processing microfinance loans , facilitating rural supply chains , documenting grassroots innovation and accessing electronic medical histories .
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