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Innovation: IBA students develop app for news watchers

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Innovation: IBA students develop app for news watchers
By Sarfaraz Memon
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The app can be downloaded for free on all Android phones. Not only can people get Pakistani news on the app, they can also share the news with their friends and family. PHOTO: FILE

SUKKUR:
Two students from the Institute of Business Administration (IBA) Sukkur, Asadullah and Imran Leghari, have developed a new app for Pakistani news watchers. The app – Pakistan News Cloud – collects Pakistan-related news from the internet and compiles them on the user’s Android phone.


“People are developing mobile apps for foreign companies and clients and making money, but we have designed this particular app for Pakistanis either living in the country or overseas,” says Asadullah, who is doing Masters in Computer Networks at IBA.

The app can be downloaded for free on all Android phones. Not only can people get Pakistani news on the app, they can also share the news with their friends and family through their mobile phones, he adds.

asadullah.jpg


IBA has supported the app through its incubation centre.

Before this app, Asadullah says, people had to visit sites of different news agencies or newspapers for looking for news related to Pakistan, but now they can get all types of Pakistani news on one page. Initially, “we have developed this app for Android phones, but in the second phase we are going to update it for iPhones and Window phones.”

Imran Leghari is doing Masters in Marketing and is responsible for launching and marketing of the software. “Our next move is to launch this software for iPhones and Window phones and we are also planning to develop software for health and education issues,” he says.

They will also develop a software for Pakistani children living abroad, he adds, which will deal with Islamic education, teachings of the Quran and the Holy Prophet (PBUH) and Namaz.

Leghari adds that in the near future they are also going to develop a security app for the people using Android phones. In case of an accident or mobile snatching, simply pressing a button will activate the software and five messages will be sent to five of the user’s contacts in five minutes, through which the receivers of the messages will know about the exact location of that person.

Both students praised their college and teachers for the help they provided.

Director Centre for Entrepreneurial Development and Leadership IBA, Ali Akbar Rizvi, while talking to The Express Tribune, said “We have developed the incubation centre for students to develop entrepreneurial skills.”

Rizvi expressed pride in his students’ work. People, he said, design such softwares to make money, but these students have come up with their product to serve the masses.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 11th, 2013.

Like Business on Facebook, follow @TribuneBiz on Twitter to stay informed and join in the conversation.
 
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I wonder how does this effect the traffic of these news sites?

When a person gets a news from this app, does the news site get a hit? I think that would determine how beneficial or not this app is for news sites of Pakistan..
 
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Its my greatest pleasure to see thread about my app on defence.pk. I am a patriot and love this forum specially. I m the developer of Pakistan News Cloud.
@RangerPK: The source website is gets hit only when click on "open in browser" button in the app.
@justsomeguy As far as comparison with normal RSS feed readers is concerned, the difference is that in Pakistan News Cloud you will not see any news repeatedly. RSS readers provide you RSS of all news sources separately, where most of the news are same in all sources.
However this app is still in beta version. Its final version is yet to come with more useful feature that will save users time in going through all news repeatedly and finding his news of interest. It will analyze users choice of news topics and sort the news accordingly.
Download the app and rate it and give me suggestions, I value your suggestions too much :)
Pakistan News Cloud - Android Apps on Google Play
 
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will download and see if its useful to feed myself with all the news pieces...

and if I can put some preferences ?
 
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Its my greatest pleasure to see thread about my app on defence.pk. I am a patriot and love this forum specially. I m the developer of Pakistan News Cloud.
@RangerPK: The source website is gets hit only when click on "open in browser" button in the app.
@justsomeguy As far as comparison with normal RSS feed readers is concerned, the difference is that in Pakistan News Cloud you will not see any news repeatedly. RSS readers provide you RSS of all news sources separately, where most of the news are same in all sources.
However this app is still in beta version. Its final version is yet to come with more useful feature that will save users time in going through all news repeatedly and finding his news of interest. It will analyze users choice of news topics and sort the news accordingly.
Download the app and rate it and give me suggestions, I value your suggestions too much :)
Pakistan News Cloud - Android Apps on Google Play
congrats and keep it up bro,,,, and a warm welcome to the forum :pakistan:
 
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@asadullah199

Feedback time:

Issues:

  • Slow - even on a 4Mbps wifi connection - ensure that you're loading the bare minimum data and implement caching on your API server - are you using an API or directly loading from RSS feeds? Is it your own API?
  • Cache front end as well - if I click on International once and come back to it, why does it take so much time - load from cache initially and lazy load more items to the top if needed.
  • Search - when I type in a term and hit the enter key, the keyboard doesn't slide down
  • Clicking categories one after another quickly is not being gracefully handled - ideally, cancel all remote requests except for the latest - don't queue them
Suggestions:
  • If I download this app, I won't use it for any news other than Pakistani news. You need to specialize in delivering quality and latest news from Pakistan. International, Sci Tech and Sports are not needed and makes your app feel like a generic news reader. Pick your niche and make it stand out.
  • Theme - it's too bland, get a college art student to design a good theme for you and skin it in
  • Pak News Cloud - The name is too generic, perhaps folks in the forum could help come up with fancy names for you
  • When I click a news item, I expect to read it in full - an excerpt then opening in a browser is a downer
  • Open in browser and Share buttons need to be bigger - Reduce the width and increase the height. When designing buttons for mobile, keep in mind that most people use touch screens. Your finger's press area should fit within the button otherwise users are unsure where exactly to push.
  • Last Update is not needed - hide it, it makes me feel like your app uses a sync mechanism. There's nothing wrong with using sync mechanism but don't let users 'feel' it. Make them feel that you have the latest and greatest data right there right now for them.

Hope this helps... cheers!
 
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This is great news, well done. I would download it, but I don't use smart phones. :(
 
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I wonder how does this effect the traffic of these news sites?

When a person gets a news from this app, does the news site get a hit? I think that would determine how beneficial or not this app is for news sites of Pakistan..

The news site does get a hit when its accessed via any mobile app. But it depends on how they have developed the app. If they are just using rss feeds, then I don't think the site will get a hit.


On topic, android industry is on boom in Pakistan, even I am learning android app development these days. People like me who are working on web development are fast moving towards android market because of more scope and better future. Mobile apps are going to play a vital role in future over web..
 
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I clicked 'Install' but the message reads, "Pakistan News Cloud will be installed on your device soon"!! WTF? :undecided: How soon?
 
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Please note that this isn't the IBA that the incumbent President of Pakistan graduated from. This is IBA-Sukkur, which used to be a part of the original IBA at one point.

THE IBA is busy organizing an international conference today. Not a very good one, but still it managed to gather known names in the CS academe.

Anyway, congrats to our student group for making the media.
 
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