Nick Bradbury

Glassboard for Your Kindle

When my Kindle Fire HD arrived, I was impressed - it's a slick tablet. But like many people, I was disappointed by the limited selection of apps. Some of my favorite Android apps don't work on the Kindle.

Luckily, Glassboard isn't one of them. Glassboard is now available in the Amazon App Store, and it looks great on the new Kindles. It takes advantage of the larger screen and hardware acceleration to provide a fast, fluid experience.

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Note: This is the same exact version that's in Google Play, but it does have one limitation: due to device differences, push notifications aren't available on the Kindle. We're looking into ways to address this in a future release.

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Glassboard Now Supports Deletions

Glassboard 2.3 is now live on Google Play and the iTunes App Store.

In this release, we've added our most requested feature: the ability to delete messages. If you want to delete something you posted, simply long-press it and choose "Delete message." You can also delete any message posted in a board you chair.

The way we've done deletes may seem unusual, so I'll explain our thinking behind it.

When we first built Glassboard, we decided against deletes because we felt "we need to own what we say." We wanted people to be more accountable when they post to Glassboard than when they post in some other places, so we intentionally didn't permit deleting messages.

That was a mistake, because it meant you couldn't delete something you posted to the wrong board, or get rid of something obnoxious someone said in one of your boards, or remove that photo of yourself in drag you uploaded when you meant to share a picture of your cat, etc.

So now you can delete, but we've done deletes in a way that still shows you posted something. Rather than remove a message entirely, we replace its text with "Message deleted by..." and get rid of any attachments. If you delete a message that has comments, the comments aren't deleted because those comments could have valuable information (but you can still delete comments you posted).

The way we've enabled people to delete any message posted in a board they chair reminds me of how a lot of newspaper sites handle comment threads. If someone posts a rude comment, the site's moderator can delete it and have it replaced with, "Comment deleted by the moderator." That way the actual comment is gone but there's still a record that so-and-so posted something offensive. You see that happen enough with the same person, and you learn to ignore stuff they post in the future.

PS: Glassboard 2.3 has a bunch of other changes, too. The Android app has been given a fresh coat of paint, and everything should feel even faster now.

Beta Testing Android Apps with In-App Updates

I've relied on public betas of my software to uncover bugs and usability problems since the first version of HomeSite back in 1994.

Sure, you can find the obvious bugs with an in-house beta, but if you really want your software to be solid you have to get it into the hands of external testers. You just can't reproduce in-house the motley assortment of hardware and expectations that external testers have.

Getting new beta versions into the hands of testers was easy when I developed for Windows, but it became trickier when I switched to Android development.

I needed to make it drop-dead simple for Glassboard testers to install beta APKs. I couldn't give them a download link they'd have to cut-and-paste or send them APKs by email - that's a pain.

So I decided to enable testers to install beta APKs from within Glassboard itself.

One of Glassboard's lesser-known features is the ability to share files - not just photos, but PDFs, spreadsheets, MS Word documents, and other popular file types.

With a bit of tweaking, I made it possible to share APKs as well. That way I could enable testers to download beta APKs from within the app. Drop-dead simple.

If you want to see this in action, join "Android Testers" on Glassboard using the invitation code ckanq. I regularly post new builds of the APK there, sometimes weeks before they're available in Google Play. Right now, for example, there's a test build which has a ton of new features (including deletions, which has been our most requested feature so far).

Glassboard Shines on Nexus 7

Earlier this week I announced a new version of Glassboard for Android which supports Glassboard premium. What I didn't mention is that this new version is also optimized for tablets like the Nexus 7.

If you used an earlier version of Glassboard on your new tablet, chances are you were disappointed by how photos didn't resize to fill the larger display. And if your eyes are like mine, you probably squinted to read anything. You may also have noticed that scrolling wasn't as smooth as it should be.

The latest version changes all that. Photos are now big and bold, text is much more readable, and scrolling is buttery smooth.

If you're one of the many folks who bought a Nexus 7 and are annoyed by how few apps take advantage of it, give the latest version of Glassboard a try. It's a much better experience than before.

 

Glassboard Premium

Perhaps the question we hear the most about Glassboard is, "if it's free and you don't do ads, then how do you make money?"

The answer is with a premium subscription, which is supported by new versions of the app that are now live in Google Play, the App Store and on the web.

For an overview of the goodies our premium version has to offer, head over to the Glassboard Blog. But I will give a shout-out to what has become my favorite premium feature: bookmarks.

At Sepia Labs, we use Glassboard to build Glassboard. Every feature, fix and improvement is discussed on Glassboard itself. Being able to bookmark messages and comments is a big help - bookmarks are my to-do list of things I need to act upon. I also bookmark photos I really like, as you can see in the screenshot below this post.

If you're a Glassboard customer and you want more out of it, I hope you'll sign up for Glassboard Premium. But even if you don't, be sure to get the latest version of the app because there are a lot of improvements for non-premium customers as well.

PS: We'll be adding some great new premium features over the next few months - there's much more to come!

Glassboard ICS

Update: This build is now live on Google Play.

When I built the Android version of Glassboard, I decided not to do anything specific for Android 4. Based on Google's stats, it looked like it would be a very long time before enough people were running ICS for it to make sense spending any time supporting it.

But Google has made some smart moves lately that should speed up the adoption of Android 4. I think it'll become the leading Android version much sooner than expected.

So I decided we needed to support ICS in Glassboard as soon as possible. Now, in fact.

If you're running ICS and would like to test drive a Glassboard build that takes advantage of ICS features like the ActionBar and hardware acceleration, you can download the APK here. If all goes well, this build will be uploaded to Google Play in a few days.

If you run into any problems with it, I hope you'll let me know by posting in my "Android Testers" board (you can join using the invitation code ckanq).

 

 

PS: This build still supports every version of Android from 2.2 upwards - it just takes advantage of ICS features when running on Android 4.

On Glassboard 2.0, Nobody Knows You're a Dog

...but they may know you're a dog person if you join my "Dog Pics" board, which I originally created so my friends and I could share photos and videos of our canine companions on Glassboard.

If you'd like to share with us, use the invitation code "dogpics" in the app to join the board. Just follow these steps if you're not sure how to do this:

Now, you may find it odd that an app that's all about private sharing enables anyone to join a board this way. So I'll clarify that you have to explicitly create an invitation code for one to exist for a board. An invitation code provides a simple way to get people into your board quickly without having to invite them - just share the code with the people you want on your board, and when everyone's in you can disable the code so it can't be used to join the board again.

Glassboard 2.0: Nailing the Privacy Experience

When we released Glassboard 1.0 last year, I think we nailed the privacy aspects. We built one of the only social apps that truly respects your privacy.

We didn't, however, nail the experience. Glassboard 1.0 wasn't ugly, but it sure wasn't pretty, either.

I think we nailed the experience in Glassboard 2.0, though. The new version - which we released today on Google Play and the iPhone App Store - doesn't just look better, but it's also easier and more fun to use. Check out the screenshots at the bottom of this post for some examples of how the new version looks.

We also answered the #1 request of our customers and built a web-based version of Glassboard (currently in beta). My favorite thing about our web app is that it enables you to share PDFs, Word documents, MP3s, Excel spreadsheets, and many other files from your desktop with your friends, family and co-workers - even if they're using our mobile apps.

There's a lot more I could say about the new version - like how it enables viewing a gallery of photos people have shared - but hopefully I've said enough to get you interested. We're really pleased with Glassboard 2.0 and we hope you'll give it a try.

Jenny Blogs Up a Storm

If you haven't checked out the Glassboard Blog lately, you should stop by. Our own Jenny Blumberg has been posting some great stuff there.

Here's a smattering of recent posts I've enjoyed:

• The Rise of the Planet of the Monkeyspheres
• The two types of social networks: Are you just spraying people or actually connecting with them?
• Ads, if I ignore you will you go away?
• Keeping track of the trackers: Collusion exposes browser cookies for you

Are You Paying Attention to Facebook?

Way back in 2004 I wrote about how a scrappy young Google was replacing an increasingly stodgy Microsoft as the predominant tech company. A year later I wrote about how Google hoped to benefit from knowing what you're paying attention to.

These days Google is turning into the stodgy company and Facebook is the scrappy upstart. And now Facebook is the one hoping to benefit from what you're paying attention to.

Frictionless sharing is Facebook's latest attempt to find out what you're paying attention to. They want to know what sites you're visiting, what songs you're listening to, and pretty much everything else about you, so they can surface more relevant content in your newsfeed and show you more relevant ads. They also want to build a more thorough profile of you in order to enable up-and-coming features like timeline, and to open up more possibilities for those who develop apps on their platform.

But if Facebook wants to collect this information, they need to do it in a way that doesn't lead customers to believe their privacy is being violated. And based on the reaction to frictionless sharing, it appears they've failed to do that. They're gathering - and exposing - all this attention data in way that scares an awful lot of people and will surely invite increased government investigation. That could backfire on them in a big way (remember how diminished Microsoft was following their wrangling with the DOJ?).

All of this makes me more confident of our decision to make privacy the focus in Glassboard. When we created Glassboard, we anticipated an eventual backlash against popular social networking services that violate your privacy. And based on the news we read every day, it seems like that backlash may come even sooner than expected.