Mr. Pete Cranston has raised an relevant queries. Unfortunately researchers are yet to take into consideraion of end users account realities in Asian region. Most of the web sites of asian aquaculture research institutes address the needs of fellow researchers and at the maximum the academicia. In India 80 % of aquaculturists are small farmers with little access to a PC. But communication revolutionhave empowered them very effectively. Many government and few private channels have regular slots for agri- aqua programmes effectively in India. Mobile phone SMS are used in closed groups by certain farmer associations to communicate price and related information T.Ravisankar

I am Dr.T.Ravisankar from CIBA, Chennai a Centre of ICAR of India. We face and try to cater to following totally different user needs in half way 1. Policy makers' need for historical data 2. academic users' need for publications on certain research interest. 3. Competing and complementing research centres needs for details of our technical programmes 4. Casual user's need for curiosity information. Though we try, we are not able to achieve 100% success due to 1. Variations in user languages ( we have two dozen full languages and about 300 dialects variants in India) 2. Variations in user understanding levels of technical matter 3. Variations in needs based on geographic location of the user. The user needs vary for head middle and tail end of a canal vary as crops chosen by them drastically vary. So when ICTs are used to globalise the common goods the user needs are important consideration to be looked at. Atleast content processing for understanding and translations to major languages are important in Asian context Regards T.Ravisankar