Quibbler is a product designed and developed by Indigo Architects. Quibbler is a
desktop application which runs on user's machine and provides a intuitive user interface.
The idea behind
Quibbler is; make it possible for an end users, to read Latest News, even if they
are NOT CONNECTED TO INTERNET. Whenever you are connected to Internet, just
run Quibbler for five minutes, it automatically sync up with News Server, and stores
all the latest news on user's machine for offline reading. User can add Comments
and Scribble on News Article and they get automatically synced up with News Server.
User can Search News Article in Offline Mode.
Times of India (TOI) is one of our customer for whom we have customized
out Quibbler Product. The TOI version of Quibbler avails Latest News and Media from
TOI server, to it's end user. Currently it is being used by thousands of users on
daily basis.
Evolution in News Industry
Till 1999, everyone use to learn about latest news majorly through two medias, Newspaper
and Television. After 1999, Evolution in Digital World started, getting access to
internet became cheaper and easier day by day. Looking at this, almost all News
Provider started publishing their News Content Online; which user can read freely
from their desktop, laptop or mobile.
But the only drawback of this was; user must be ALWAYS CONNECTED to internet, which
is not possible for everyone. To target such users, News Companies started developing
Offline News Reader. Using such products user can download the news while they are
connected to Internet, and can read in offline mode.
Is "Quibbler" an Offline News Reader?
And the answer is YES. Times of India (TOI) wanted a software
which user can use to read news when they are not connected to Internet (offline
mode). And as Quibbler is one such product, TOI came to Indigo Architects with their
requirements.
As it's a classic case of Server-Client communication, we have architectured Quibbler
Application keeping
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
in mind. We choosed WPF for building Quibbler's user interface. WPF gave us a toolset
using which we have given 3D user interface to Quibbler.
The application provides many features to the End User. Following are some of the
Highlighting and Unique
feature set provided
by Quibbler Application:
- User can add comment on News Article which will be
store on the machine itself.
- Automatic detection of Internet Connectivity, if not
available application runs in Offline Mode.
- Scribble or Ink facility on News Article.
- User can search News in offline mode, this search includes
News stored local machine.
- Text to Speech conversion, application can read News
Article and you can hear it.
- Related News articles using Spider Search.
Technology:
Quibbler Application has two modules; a Desktop Application and a News Provider
Service. Both of these can be developed in any language and for any platform. For
TOI version, we have used following Microsoft Technologies to build Quibbler:
- Desktop Application
Using Windows Presentation Foundation
(WPF): we have built the heart of Quibbler. WPF made it possible for us
to create 3D controls, with which user can play. Instead of Reading News user can
Hear the news using in-build Text to Speech engine.
- News Provider Web Service
Quibbler is architured keeping
Service Oriented Architecture (SOA)
in mind. WCF Services plays
a vital role in keeping News Content in Sync. Quibbler Application resides on Client
Machine (which can be anywhere in the world) and fetches the latest news using Custom
WCF Services (which is on TOI Server).